It measures roughly six metres north to south and four metres east to west, and at its south-eastern edge a cluster of stones breaks the surface, apparently forming three sides of a small square enclosure about 1.2 metres across. What lies beneath is the remnant of a cist burial, a stone-lined grave of the type commonly used during the Bronze Age, in which a body or cremated remains were placed within a box-like arrangement of upright slabs and sealed with a capstone.

The full picture only emerged, as so often happens with such sites, through accidental discovery. According to a record published by Fitzgerald in 1858, a local farmer levelling the mound came upon a cist covered by a single large stone, beneath which lay two human skeletons. The disturbance almost certainly destroyed whatever stratigraphic context might have helped date the burial precisely, and no further excavation appears to have followed. What remains today is the diminished mound, its exposed stonework hinting at the structure below, and the knowledge that this was not an isolated burial. Two further tumuli, low mounds of similar character, lie roughly 400 metres to the north-east within the same townland of Ballyvorisheen, suggesting that this corner of east Cork once served as a deliberate burial ground, its significance now largely erased by centuries of agricultural use.