This is a ring barrow, a type of funerary monument typically consisting of a central mound or platform enclosed by a ditch and an outer earthen bank, and the one at Coogue has been so thoroughly folded into its surroundings that it takes a moment to read what you are actually looking at.

The monument sits in pasture on raised ground that falls away steeply to the north-west and north-east, giving it the kind of elevated, outward-facing position that was frequently chosen for such burials. The central area measures roughly 6.4 metres across and sits only slightly proud of the surrounding ground, rising to perhaps 0.35 metres at its highest point to the north-west. Around it runs a silted-up fosse, the encircling ditch now largely filled in, and beyond that an external bank of earth and stone brings the overall diameter to around 13 metres. That outer bank, modest as it is, has been co-opted at some point as part of a field boundary running from north-north-west to east, and further remnants of field fencing overlie it to the south-east and south-west. The effect is one of deep, unselfconscious continuity: the same earthwork serving a prehistoric community and, centuries later, a farmer dividing grazing ground. A ring of hawthorn, blackthorn and hazel now grows around the monument, which is a pattern often seen at old earthworks in Ireland, where superstition or simple practical neglect kept the plough at a distance long enough for scrub to take hold.