What makes it unusual is the double life suggested by its designation: the structure is a wedge-shaped cairn, a type of megalithic tomb generally associated with the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age, yet the site carries the name of a children's burial ground. That overlap is not as contradictory as it might first seem. Across Ireland, ancient cairns and earthworks were frequently repurposed in the post-medieval period as cillíní, informal burial places for unbaptised infants who, under Catholic doctrine, could not be interred in consecrated ground. The living found a practical use in the already-broken earth of an older monument, and the old and the new became inseparable in local tradition.

The cairn itself measures roughly 28 metres along its longer north-northwest to south-southeast axis and about 11 metres across, rising to a maximum height of 1.2 metres. It is composed of small and medium-sized stones, now largely obscured beneath turf, giving it the soft, indistinct outline characteristic of long-undisturbed field monuments. A considerable portion of the broad northern end has been quarried away at some point, reducing what would have been a more substantial presence on the hillside. Ten metres to the north lies a separate enclosure, suggesting the site exists within a wider complex of features that have accumulated, and been altered, over a very long period.