What marks it out is its category: a ditch barrow, a type of prehistoric burial monument defined not by a mound raised over the dead but by a shallow encircling fosse, the term used for a ditch or trench cut into the ground around a central area. The central platform here measures just six metres in diameter, defined by a low earthen scarp no more than fifteen centimetres in external height. It is an understated presence on the landscape, the kind of feature that rewards a deliberate eye rather than announcing itself.

The monument sits on the level summit of the hillock, orientated east to west, and is positioned roughly twenty metres to the west-south-west of a neighbouring ringbarrow, a related but distinct form in which a low mound is typically surrounded by a bank and ditch. The proximity of the two monuments suggests this corner of Sligo was meaningful ground during the prehistoric period, a place returned to for burial or commemoration rather than a single isolated act. The fosse that defines the ditch barrow is one and a half metres wide, though it has been partially infilled over time; the sections running from the north-west to north-east and from the south-south-east to south-south-west are now barely visible at ground level, smoothed over by centuries of agricultural use and the slow drift of soil.