By 1998 it was still faintly legible in the landscape, its low enclosing bank, roughly four metres wide, tracing a sub-circular outline measuring approximately twenty-three metres by eighteen metres. At its centre sat a raised mound or internal rise, the kind of feature associated with a barrow, a prehistoric burial mound typically constructed during the Bronze Age as a marker for the dead. Then, in 2002, housing development removed the site entirely.

What we know of it comes from black-and-white aerial photography, interpreted as part of Michael Connolly's 2008 doctoral thesis at University College Cork, which examined prehistoric settlement across the Lee Valley and broader Tralee region from a landscape perspective. Aerial photography has long been one of archaeology's more quietly remarkable tools: cropmarks, soil discolouration, and subtle changes in surface relief that are invisible at ground level can read clearly from above, particularly in low-angle light or dry summers when buried features affect vegetation growth. In this case, the photograph was clear enough to identify the enclosing bank and the central rise, though Connolly was careful to note that the internal mound could represent a collapsed structure rather than an original burial feature. The classification as a probable barrow rests on that combination of evidence, a circular enclosure with a raised interior, set into sloping ground.

There is nothing to see at Barrakilla now. The site no longer exists in any physical form, and no visitor detail is worth supplying for something that was replaced by housing before many would have thought to look for it. Its interest lies precisely in what was lost and how narrowly it was documented, caught in a single aerial image before the ground was cleared.