This is a bowl-barrow, a type of prehistoric funerary monument typically dating from the Bronze Age, consisting of a raised circular mound surrounded by a ditch, known as a fosse, and in many cases an outer bank beyond that. The example at Graffanstown follows that pattern closely, and its survival in the rolling midlands landscape, away from the more celebrated monument clusters of the east and west, is quietly remarkable.

The mound itself is roughly circular, measuring around 10.8 metres north to south and 13.2 metres east to west across its flat top, and rising approximately one metre above the surrounding ground. Encircling it is a fosse about 1.9 metres wide, with a low external bank beyond, some two metres wide and only about 15 centimetres high. The fosse and bank have been levelled along the north-east to south-east arc, most likely the result of gradual agricultural pressure over the centuries. What remains is enough to read the original form clearly: a deliberate, engineered landscape feature placed on the ridge with the kind of considered positioning that characterised prehistoric monument-builders across Ireland and Britain.