They are modest things, none of them rising much above half a metre, and several are so thoroughly colonised by sod and grass that they read more as lumps in the ground than deliberate human constructions. Yet their position, sitting directly on top of natural bedrock rather than embedded in the surrounding peat, is quietly telling.

Assessed by archaeologists Quinn and Carroll in 2010 as part of a wind farm heritage study at Doonens, the five cairns, labelled A through E, are interpreted not as burial monuments but as clearance cairns, meaning they most likely represent stones gathered and heaped aside by people preparing ground for agriculture or grazing. Clearance cairns of this type are a common enough feature of the Irish landscape, the practical residue of farming communities who piled fieldstones out of the way rather than scatter them. What makes the An Inse Mhór group notable is their relationship to the bog itself: the cairns are thought to pre-date the peat that eventually grew up around them, placing their origins in a period when this part of Cork was open, workable land. The individual mounds vary in character. Cairn B includes some upright stones among its medium to large rubble. Cairn E has bedrock visibly protruding beneath it. Cairn D, orientated north to south, carries an incongruous addition: a modern concrete block worked into the pile, a reminder that these features, wherever they survive, continue to attract the attention of passing hands.