Around 1840, a cist was uncovered at the eastern edge of a barrow here at Clonroe, and inside it was an urn. A cist, in archaeological terms, is a short stone-lined grave or container, typically associated with Bronze Age burial practice, often just large enough to hold a crouched body or a vessel of cremated remains. The urn found within this one almost certainly contained the latter.

The discovery is recorded by Kinahan, writing between 1879 and 1888, who notes the find without much elaboration, as was common for antiquarian accounts of the period. By the time Kinahan set it down, the event was already several decades in the past, a chance find rather than a controlled excavation. The barrow with which the cist is associated sits towards the lower part of the hill's south-facing slope, with a small stream running roughly northwest to southeast about forty metres to the west, and a road passing just to the north. Barrows are earthen or stone burial mounds, and their positioning on hillsides was rarely accidental; visibility and landscape were often deliberate considerations for those who constructed them.

What remains on the ground today is the barrow itself rather than the cist, which was disturbed at the time of discovery. The site sits in quiet agricultural land, unremarkable to the passing eye, though the stream and the road described in the nineteenth-century account still help to orient the location on the hillside.