It measures roughly two and a half metres by one and three quarter metres, and at its highest point it rises only about twenty centimetres from the ground. Yet this unassuming oval heap, catalogued by researchers as Site D, belongs to a landscape that was once densely occupied and ritually significant, a place where people built, buried, and apparently returned across generations thousands of years ago.

The cairn was recorded and described by Rynne and Ó hEailidhe in 1965, who noted its oval plan, its east to west orientation, and the absence of any kerb stones, the upright stones that sometimes ring and define a cairn's boundary. That lack of a kerb makes it harder to read, structurally speaking, though the general form is consistent with the funerary and commemorative monuments that appear across Ireland from the Late Neolithic and into the Early Bronze Age, a broad period roughly spanning from around 3000 to 1500 BC. Site D is not an isolated curiosity; it sits within what the record describes as an extensive settlement and cemetery complex from that same era, suggesting that this hillside once formed part of a wider inhabited and ceremonial landscape rather than a single, isolated act of monument-building.

Piperstown Hill falls within the Dublin Mountains, south of the city, and the southern slopes where this cairn sits are accessible on foot, though the terrain is open upland and conditions underfoot can be soft, particularly after rain. The cairn itself is small enough that knowing roughly where to look beforehand is genuinely useful; consulting the Sites and Monuments Record for its mapped location before heading out will save considerable searching. Given its height of just twenty centimetres, low-angle light, either in the early morning or late afternoon, can help distinguish the stone scatter from the surrounding ground. There are no facilities or formal access points specific to this site, so good footwear and a map are the practical essentials.