It measures roughly four metres across, rises only about a quarter of a metre at its scarp edge, and carries within its interior a shallow depression, the kind of detail that distinguishes a burial monument from a natural undulation. Below it, approximately four metres to the south-south-west, lies an old rushy flood plain, the sort of low, waterlogged ground that has probably looked much the same for centuries.

What this mound represents is an embanked barrow, a prehistoric funerary monument consisting of a low earthen mound enclosed by a bank and, in some cases, a surrounding fosse or ditch. Barrows of this kind are found across Ireland and Britain, and while they vary considerably in scale and elaboration, the defining features are consistent: a raised central area, a surrounding earthwork, and frequently a depression at the centre caused either by the original construction or by later disturbance. At Friarsfield, faint traces of the outer fosse survive in places, though the monument as a whole is modest in both height and diameter. It was identified during fieldwork in 2009, which means it went unrecorded in any formal archaeological inventory until relatively recently, despite almost certainly being prehistoric in origin.