Cattle have worn away its eastern edge over the years, exposing layers of soil roughly 0.4 metres thick and revealing something of the mound's mixed composition: large quantities of stone bound up with earth, neither a pure earthen barrow nor a straightforward stone cairn, but something in between. It measures about eleven metres across in both directions and rises to around 2.2 metres at its highest point on the north-east side. Very faint traces of what may once have been a broad, shallow ditch survive on the south-east side, hinting at the full form of a bowl-barrow, the commonest type of Bronze Age funerary monument in Ireland and Britain, typically consisting of a central mound enclosed within a surrounding ditch and sometimes an outer bank.

What makes this particular mound quietly puzzling is its placement. Whoever raised it did not choose the most commanding spot available. A more prominent rise lies to the south-south-west within the same field, and a north-south ridge sits immediately to the north-east. The builders ignored both, setting the mound on lower, less conspicuous ground roughly 300 metres west of the shore of Lough Owel. It was surveyed in 2012 by David McGuinness, who recorded that Knockdrin is visible to the east and that Frewin Hill would be visible to the west were it not for intervening trees. Whether the relationship to those landmarks was deliberate, or whether proximity to the lake mattered more than height, is not something the mound itself answers. It simply sits there in the pasture, steep-sided and slightly pointed at its crest, quietly out of place on a field that offers better options.