It is a ring barrow, a type of prehistoric funerary monument in which a burial or ceremonial deposit is enclosed by a circular ditch and bank, and this particular example measures just four metres across at its interior. That modesty of scale is part of what makes it easy to overlook, and part of what makes it worth attention.

The monument was identified during a field inspection rather than from aerial photography or documentary sources, which says something about how subtle it is. A scarped edge, less than a tenth of a metre high, defines the interior, and outside that sits a shallow fosse, the term for a ditch associated with earthwork enclosures, with a barely visible earthen bank beyond it. The whole structure, bank and fosse combined, spans only 1.6 metres in width. The interior itself is level and clear of vegetation, with a slight southwestward slope along its southern edge. What the site lacks in drama it compensates for in completeness; the basic form of the monument is still legible, even if it demands close reading. It does not stand alone either. Another ring barrow lies roughly forty metres to the northwest, and further examples are recorded in the vicinity, suggesting that this corner of Ballyholahan once held some significance as a place set aside from the living.