It is, in fact, a ring barrow, a type of funerary earthwork typically dating to the Bronze Age, in which a central mound is encircled by a ditch and an outer bank. What makes this particular example quietly arresting is the relationship between the monument and the landform beneath it: the natural knoll appears to have been deliberately shaped and incorporated into the construction, so that the built and the geological are, to some degree, inseparable.

Surveyed in 2013 and described in detail by David McGuinness in 2014, the monument measures 33.5 metres across at its widest, with a central mound or platform roughly 19.2 metres in diameter. The outer bank is reasonably well preserved, though the northern side has suffered some damage. On the north-east, there is a breach around 5.1 metres wide that may represent an original entrance. The earthwork has a distinctive stepped profile: the base of the encircling ditch sits higher than the ground beyond the outer bank, so that the central platform rises noticeably above everything around it, reaching up to 1.45 metres above the ditch at its highest point on the north-east side. That same north-east portion of the interior may contain a smaller, poorly defined mound of its own, roughly 6 metres in diameter. A separate tiny mound lies on another knoll about 135 metres to the south-west, suggesting this corner of Westmeath held some significance across a broader area. Frewin Hill is visible on the horizon to the north-north-east, a landmark that the monument's builders may or may not have intended as a reference point, but which gives the site a sense of orientation within a wider prehistoric landscape.