What makes the find quietly arresting is not its size, which was modest at roughly one metre in diameter, but the care that had gone into its construction: a floor slab, four low side slabs forming the walls, and a corbelled ceiling, where stones are laid in overlapping courses to create a vault, sealed with a central capstone. Someone, at some point in prehistory, had gone to considerable trouble to build a small, architecturally considered chamber for the dead.

Cremated bone was recovered from inside the cist, confirming its function as a burial. Above the sealed capstone, before the pit had been backfilled, a layer of charcoal and sooty silt had accumulated, though this deposit contained no cremated bone, leaving its purpose or origin unclear. Whether it represents the remnants of a graveside ritual or simply material that found its way in by other means is not known. Equally uncertain is whether any surface marker ever indicated the grave's presence; if there was one, it left no trace. The cist was excavated and removed in early 1996, and subsequent investigation of the surrounding area revealed no further examples nearby.