Fifteen metres across and just over two metres high, it is circular in profile, though the southern side sits noticeably lower than the rest. Small boulders and stones protrude from its surface, giving it a rougher texture than you might expect from a burial mound that has spent centuries under pasture. There is a dip at the base, but no surrounding fosse, which is the defensive or ceremonial ditch commonly associated with monuments of this type. A later ditch has, however, been cut into the base on the southern and eastern sides at some point, suggesting the site was disturbed or adapted long after its original construction.

Bowl-barrows are among the more common forms of prehistoric funerary monument in Ireland, typically raised mounds of earth or stone placed over a burial, often dating to the Bronze Age. What gives Ballinree a slightly stranger quality is its relationship to the surrounding terrain. Sitting at the local high point, it commands views in every direction, which may or may not have been deliberate on the part of whoever built it. More immediately intriguing is the presence of a prostrate standing stone lying roughly fifty metres to the south-east. A standing stone fallen flat, whether toppled by time, agriculture, or deliberate effort, carries its own ambiguity; it hints at a wider arrangement of monuments in the area that has been partially erased or obscured. Whether the two features were ever functionally related is not recorded, but their proximity on the same elevated ground is difficult to ignore.