The effect is quietly telling: whoever manages the land recognised, or was required to recognise, that something old and deliberate was sitting there. The mound itself is roughly circular, measuring about 8.5 metres north to south and 8.6 metres east to west, and rises to around 1.45 metres at its north-eastern side, domed to slightly conical in profile. Boulders push through the grassy surface at the top, and faint terracing runs around the western side, though this appears to be the result of erosion rather than any original design.

This is a mound barrow, a burial monument of the kind raised across Ireland and Britain during the Bronze Age, typically to cover the remains of one or more individuals, sometimes with grave goods, sometimes without. They tend to be sited with intention, placed on elevated ground where they would be visible across the surrounding landscape. The Balgarrett mound fits that pattern: when surveyed by David McGuinness in 2013, he noted that the view from the eminence would have been excellent, were it not for the trees that now close it in. What makes the site more than an isolated curiosity is the company it keeps. Four other barrows lie within the same townland, the nearest roughly 500 metres to the north-west, suggesting that this corner of Westmeath was once a place of repeated, deliberate commemoration, a cluster of monuments returned to over time rather than a single act of burial on a convenient hill.