A cist is a type of prehistoric grave formed by setting flat slabs on edge to create a small rectangular chamber, typically used to hold a crouched burial or cremated remains. This one had already been interfered with long before any archaeologist arrived, its roofing stones gone and both ends robbed out, leaving only the raw dimensions of what once existed.

When excavation took place in 1986, the structure was recorded as measuring more than 2.2 metres in length, 0.44 metres wide, and 0.39 metres high, oriented on an ENE to WSW alignment. That alignment is not unusual for prehistoric funerary monuments, which were often positioned in deliberate relationship to sunrise or sunset at particular times of year. What makes this one quietly curious is its location: not tucked into a hillside or laid into open ground, but set on the very spine of a promontory above the lough, in a position that would once have felt genuinely elevated and exposed. The quarrying that brought it to light also robbed any chance of understanding its full original context, and the robbing of its ends suggests it had been disturbed at some earlier point, possibly centuries before the machinery arrived.