The feature at Raheennamadra is a ditch barrow, a type of prehistoric funerary monument typically consisting of a low central mound or grave enclosed by a surrounding ditch, and it belongs to a small cluster of related earthworks spread across a narrow strip of farmland divided by a stream.

The site first attracted scholarly attention in 1966, when the archaeologist Stenberger identified it as Site V in a survey of the area, noting it as one of two barely distinguishable ring-shaped structures, one positioned on each side of a stream running roughly south to north. Stenberger measured the feature at approximately 13 metres in diameter and recorded it cautiously as a possible grave. A companion earthwork lies around 48 metres to the south-east, and another ditch barrow sits roughly 40 metres to the south-west, with the townland of Knockaunatarriff visible about 250 metres further in that direction. Despite this concentration of potential prehistoric remains, none of the features appear on the historical Ordnance Survey mapping of the area, suggesting they were either too subtle to record at the time or had already degraded significantly before systematic surveying began.

The barrow is not something a visitor would locate by eye alone. Its presence has been confirmed primarily through aerial photography, including ASI photographs taken in October 2002 and satellite imagery captured between 2011 and 2018, on which it appears as a circular cropmark approximately 6 metres in diameter defined by the line of its enclosing ditch. Cropmarks of this kind appear when buried features affect the growth of surface vegetation, often becoming clearest in dry summers when soil moisture above a ditch differs from the surrounding ground. The field itself is pasture with a stream running along its eastern edge. Access to the land would require landowner permission, and the feature itself offers little to the naked eye; its interest lies as much in the story of how such things are found and recorded as in anything visible on the ground.