It sits roughly three metres to the south-south-east of a pair of standing stones, and two further cairns of similar character lie within seventeen to twenty metres to the south. Together with several other monuments in the immediate vicinity, these features form a complex that suggests deliberate, sustained use of this particular patch of upland landscape over a long period.

The cairn itself is circular, measuring nine metres in diameter and standing about a metre high, a modest but legible presence in the field. A cairn of this type is essentially a mound of loose stone, often raised over a burial or used as a landscape marker, and the stones near the perimeter here appear to preserve traces of a kerb, the ring of larger stones that would originally have edged and retained the mound. This detail was noted by the archaeologist Seán Ó Nualláin in 1984, and it hints that the structure was once more formally defined than its current weathered appearance suggests. The grouping of cairns alongside standing stones, of which Cork has a considerable concentration, points to a Bronze Age ceremonial or funerary landscape, though the specific date and function of the Knockraheen monuments have not been established through excavation.