Aerial surveys carried out between 2005 and 2013 failed to pick it up at all, and it does not appear on any Ordnance Survey historic maps. It took a Google Earth image captured on 20 September 2020 to finally betray its presence, and even then only as a faint circular cropmark roughly 7 metres across. That a monument of prehistoric origin could quietly persist in a flood-prone pasture field, unacknowledged by cartographers and largely undetectable from the air for decades, gives some sense of how thoroughly the Irish landscape can absorb its own past.

A ring barrow is a low burial mound enclosed by a surrounding ditch and, typically, an outer bank, the whole arrangement forming a series of concentric rings when seen from above. This example at Coolalough was recorded as Site 5 by researcher Christine Tarbett in 1987, who noted that it sits slightly elevated in its field, closest to the nearby farm buildings and directly east of them. She recorded an external diameter of 13 metres, with an interior platform of 7 metres across. The enclosing bank runs almost continuously around the mound, though it becomes low and indistinct to the north-east and east. The ring-ditch itself, the channel separating the central platform from the outer bank, measures approximately 15 centimetres in depth and 1.3 metres in width. A second ring barrow lies just 30 metres to the north, and the River Mahore runs 65 metres to the south-west, its course doubling as a townland boundary with Oldtown. The monument was compiled into the record by Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly in November 2020.

The site sits roughly 40 metres south of a farm trackway in improved pasture that is liable to flooding, so the ground underfoot can be soft and the monument itself is not always easily readable at field level. Given that the feature eluded aerial detection for years, visitors should not expect a dramatic earthwork; the elevation is subtle, and the ditch shallow. The most useful reference remains Tarbett's 1987 sketch plan, which maps the proportions clearly. The September cropmark image suggests that late summer, when moisture differentials in the soil become visible through grass growth, offers the best chance of seeing any surface expression from a distance.