The cairn at Lackaroe is only four metres across, and in its western and northern sections it barely raises itself a matter of centimetres above the surrounding ground. It is only in the south-eastern sector, where the turf has pulled back and the original stones sit exposed, that the structure rises to something approaching a noticeable height of around ninety centimetres. Even then, a passing walker might take it for nothing more than a farmer's cleared stone pile. Intermittent kerbing, the low border of upright or closely packed stones that once defined the outer edge of such a monument, survives around the perimeter, hinting at something more deliberate beneath.

The cairn sits on a south-facing slope above the valley of the Sheen River, a position that would have been chosen with some care. Funerary and ceremonial cairns of this kind were frequently placed on elevated ground with wide views across a valley or lowland, and this one looks out over terrain that has been farmed and settled in various forms for millennia. What makes the Lackaroe site particularly interesting as a landscape feature is its immediate neighbourhood. Around forty metres to the south lies an enclosure, the kind of roughly circular or rectangular boundary, typically defined by an earthen bank or stone wall, that served as a farmstead or stock compound in earlier periods. Roughly seventy metres to the south-west, two adjoining hut sites suggest the remains of small stone-walled shelters or dwellings. Together, these features point to an area that was not merely passed through but occupied, worked, and memorialised over a considerable stretch of time.