A bowl barrow is a type of prehistoric burial mound, steep-sided and rounded, typically encircled by a ditch, and this one is a reasonably well-preserved example measuring roughly 8.5 metres north to south and 9.3 metres east to west. What makes it slightly unsettling is the damage: a depression cuts into the top of the mound and continues down the south-eastern side, and where the sod has been disturbed on the eastern edge, the mound's interior of earth and stone is exposed. The most likely explanation, noted by surveyor David McGuinness in 2015, is that the site has been ransacked by treasure hunters at some point.

The ditch that encircles the mound tells its own story of accumulated disturbance. At its best-preserved points on the north-west and south sides, the ditch ranges from 1.8 to 3.2 metres wide, though it effectively disappears on the eastern side, apparently filled in when a field fence running roughly north-north-west to south-south-east was constructed nearby. The southern section of the ditch is both the broadest and deepest, partly because the land falls noticeably from south to north, which has exaggerated the apparent height of the mound on that side to around 1.5 metres. There may once have been a bank running outside the ditch, the kind of enclosure typical of this monument type, but if so it has largely merged with the natural rising ground to the south and is difficult to read with confidence.

The barrow sits in relatively low-lying ground, so the views from the mound itself are limited, with land climbing again immediately to the south and south-west. The exception is to the north and west, where the Ben of Fore, a prominent hillside roughly 3.5 kilometres to the north-west, comes clearly into view. Whether or not whoever built this mound had that landmark in mind, it gives the site an unexpected sense of orientation, a quiet connection to the broader landscape of this part of Westmeath.