The monument, a ditch barrow, is a type of funerary enclosure defined not by a raised mound but by a surrounding ditch, or fosse, dug into the ground. This particular example was modest in scale, roughly 4.25 metres in diameter, with a fosse less than a metre wide and around 30 centimetres deep. What makes it linger in the mind is not its size but the deliberateness of what was placed there, and what that suggests about how the living once chose to mark, and then revisit, the dead.

The site was uncovered during archaeological monitoring of the N8 bypass between June 2004 and March 2005. Excavation showed two distinct phases of use. In the first, the fosse was open and in use, with charcoal flecks in the sandy clay fills indicating that burning had taken place nearby. After the fosse was deliberately backfilled, a second, narrower slot was cut along its inner edge. This secondary feature contained charcoal-rich fills and fragments of cremated human bone, though the quantity was small enough that the excavator interpreted it as a token deposit rather than a primary burial. Radiocarbon dating of in-situ burning material from the upper fills of this second fosse returned a date of approximately 349 to 43 BC, placing the later activity in the Iron Age. The site may not have stood alone: the excavator noted a possible association with a cluster of Bronze Age and Iron Age monuments located immediately to the north-east, several of which were also exposed along the bypass route.