The stones are not uniform; some carry veins of quartz, giving the structure a faint glitter where the rock catches the light. Despite its considerable dimensions, the monument reads as low and worn, rising only between one and one and a half metres at its highest, with a hollow scooped into its middle where material has long since been removed or collapsed inward.

A cairn of this type, a mound of heaped stones rather than earthen soil, would typically mark a burial or serve as a territorial signal on high ground, and here it occupies a position of clear prominence within the enclosing earthworks of the hillfort. The northwest sector of the cairn has been noticeably altered, with stones built up to form a trigonometrical station, one of the fixed survey points used in mapping the landscape, meaning that the monument has served two quite different purposes across its long existence. The hill has also been subject to more recent disruption: it was planted with conifers at some point in the past and has since been replanted, and this forestry activity has contributed to further damage to an already denuded structure. The combination of ancient interference, Victorian-era surveying, and modern plantation work has left the cairn in a quietly complicated state, its original form readable but increasingly eroded by successive layers of practical use.