The cairn is modest in height, rising only about sixty centimetres above the ground, but it spreads roughly nine metres north to south and five metres east to west, its body made up of small stones rather than the large boulders more commonly associated with prehistoric burial mounds. What gives the site a quietly unsettled quality is that it is already partially undone: one large flat stone lies at its eastern end, and another uprooted stone lies broken in pieces a short distance from the south-eastern corner.

A cairn of this kind is essentially a deliberate accumulation of stones, often raised over a burial or to mark a significant place in the landscape, and the presence of a standing stone nearby suggests this corner of Gortroe held some ceremonial or commemorative meaning for the people who shaped it. Researcher Myler, writing in 1998, recorded the condition of the displaced stones, noting the flat stone at the east and the fragmented one close to the cairn's southern edge. The northern limit of the cairn material is defined not by any constructed boundary but by natural limestone outcropping rock breaking through the surface, the geology of the place quietly setting the terms for what the monument could become.