The find is compact and quietly unsettling: a short cist, measuring just 1.2 metres long, 0.7 metres wide, and 0.6 metres high, constructed from four upright slabs sealed beneath a flat capstone, with its long axis running north to south.

A short cist is a type of prehistoric box-grave, built from stone slabs and generally intended for individual inhumation burials, though the contents at Cloghroak complicate any simple reading. Inside were two unburnt skeletons, one of them an infant, alongside the cremated bones of an adult and two vases. The presence of both unburnt and cremated remains within the same small chamber is unusual, and reflects the variety of mortuary practices that coexisted during the Irish Bronze Age, when communities did not always adhere rigidly to a single burial rite. The two vases were likely pottery vessels of the kind commonly placed with the dead during this period, possibly containing food or other offerings. The site was recorded by McCaffrey in 1952 and subsequently discussed by John Waddell, one of the leading scholars of Irish prehistoric burial traditions, in work published in 1975 and 1990.