When it was first recorded in the Record of Monuments and Places in 1996, following its identification by Tom Coffey, it was classified as a fulacht fiadh, the term used for a type of prehistoric cooking site typically associated with burnt mounds and troughs for heating water with fire-cracked stones. That classification, however, sits uneasily with what is actually visible on the ground.

The cairn is subcircular, measuring roughly 8.8 metres north to south and 8.2 metres east to west, and rises between 0.6 and 0.9 metres above the surrounding pasture. It sits within a large field system that shows evidence of use across multiple periods, which is itself a reminder that this corner of Clare has been worked and organised by people for a very long time. The cairn is positioned on a slight natural rise or shelf of rock outcrop, some 0.8 metres high, which curves around the monument's edge from the south-east to the north-west at a distance of between 1.6 and 3 metres from its base. The rough edges of this shelf suggest it may have been deliberately shaped to create that curved margin, which would imply a degree of deliberate landscaping rather than simply opportunistic placement. At the top of the cairn, someone has excavated a trench, roughly a metre wide and up to half a metre deep, curving from east to south around a single upright stone slab. The slab stands 0.6 metres high, is oriented north-west to south-east, and has a rounded profile. Spoil from that digging was left piled on the cairn itself, which makes it difficult now to be certain what the original profile looked like or what the trench revealed.