Most barrows, the burial or ceremonial earthworks raised by prehistoric communities across Ireland, tend toward the circular. This one is markedly tear-drop or eye-shaped, broader at the west than the east, measuring roughly 31.7 metres along its longest axis. A large, gently domed basal mound is defined on all sides by a steep scarp, and sitting on top of that, positioned eccentrically closer to the narrow eastern end than the wide western one, is a smaller secondary mound barely half a metre high at its tallest point. The overall height from ground level to the top of the upper mound reaches about two metres at the south-east. Kerb-like boulders protrude from the edges of the scarp on the north and south sides, though they appear at irregular heights and fieldworkers have noted no clear evidence they were ever formally arranged. Cattle erosion and what looks like small-scale quarrying have nibbled at the edges, particularly at the north-north-east, but the monument as a whole has survived reasonably intact.

Surveyed in 2015 and described in detail by David McGuinness, the barrow sits on a local eminence, and there is reason to think the mound was partly shaped from the natural rise of the ground itself. The absence of a surrounding ditch is telling: without one, there is no obvious source for the material that makes up the substantial basal mound, pointing instead to the careful manipulation of an existing landform. The position was clearly chosen with some deliberateness. Looking north from the barrow, the hillside carries another complex and prominently sited barrow at Rathwire Upper, and the hill above that is capped by a ring-barrow set within an unusual rectilinear enclosure, a configuration rare enough to attract attention on its own terms. A couple of hundred metres to the south, two branches of the Riverstown River, an east-west flowing tributary of the Deel, mark the lower boundary of this small but quietly dense prehistoric landscape.