Roughly oval in shape, measuring about 14 metres north to south and nearly 13 metres east to west, the mound is a tumulus, a heaped earthen and stone monument raised over the dead in prehistoric times. It still reaches a height of nearly two metres on its western side, but grazing cattle have done considerable damage: four large chunks have been bitten out of the structure, two on the east and two on the west, to a depth of 0.70 metres, exposing the mound's interior composition of earth mixed with stones, some of them very large.

When surveyor David McGuinness examined the site in 2012, he noted that the damage made it genuinely difficult to determine what the mound originally looked like. It was probably domed, as most barrows of this type are, but there is a faint possibility it was stepped, with a broad horizontal ledge running around a raised central cap. Around the northern and north-western sides, the ground dips in a way that suggests material was once scraped from a surrounding ditch, perhaps 11 metres wide, to build the mound itself. The site had not appeared in the Record of Monuments and Places, the statutory list of known archaeological sites in Ireland, and came to the attention of researchers only through a reference by Peter Wallace in 1987. Its absence from official records for so long is unusual for a monument of this scale.

What makes the location additionally striking is its relationship to the wider landscape. From the hilltop, the barrows on the northern end of the Leny ridge are clearly visible to the south-west, Frewin Hill can be seen on the southern horizon, and Loughs Derravaragh and Iron lie open to view to the north-east and south-west respectively. Whether by intention or convenience, whoever raised this mound chose a position that kept several significant landmarks in sight, a quality shared by many prehistoric burial monuments across Ireland.