The mound measures roughly 24.5 metres across and rises about two metres above the surrounding ground, dimensions that place it well beyond the modest scale of a simple burial mound and into the range of something potentially far older. A slight depression near its centre may indicate a collapsed internal chamber, which has led surveyors to consider whether this could be a passage tomb, the kind of megalithic monument, typically prehistoric, in which a stone-lined corridor leads to a central burial chamber. No kerbstones or other diagnostic features are visible at the surface, and it remains unclear whether the structure beneath the earth and pine needles is primarily stone or soil.

The mound was already old enough to be worth recording when William Larkin included it on his 1808 map of County Westmeath, suggesting it was a recognised feature of the landscape long before any formal archaeological attention. When surveyors first described it in detail in 1980, they noted a wide shallow fosse, a surrounding ditch, encircling the mound, along with an uneven surface consistent with fairly recent disturbance. By the time David McGuinness surveyed the site in 2012, the plantation had matured considerably, and the mound was carpeted in pine needles with several old tree stumps breaking its surface. The trigonometrical station capping the mound, a concrete pillar used in ordnance mapping, adds an incongruous modern note to whatever ancient intention shaped the hill. Across Lough Owel to the west, Frewin Hill carries its own prehistoric monument, and the two sites would face each other directly were it not for the trees that now close off that view.