The box itself is modest by any measure, roughly 0.9 metres long, 0.6 metres wide, and 0.4 metres deep, yet it is the kind of burial that quietly reframes a landscape. It is not visible at ground level now, which means anyone passing over it would have no reason to suspect it was there at all.

The cist, a type of prehistoric grave formed by lining a pit with flat stone slabs and usually covered with a capstone, came to light in 1934 when a cairn, the mound of stones that had originally marked and protected the burial, was removed from the site. Inside the cist was a bowl food vessel, a style of pottery associated with Early Bronze Age burial practice in Ireland, placed alongside the cremated remains of the deceased. The cist itself was preserved in place after its discovery rather than excavated away, which is why it remains underground today. Accounts of the find were recorded by pupils and teachers at Drumeen school as part of the Irish Folklore Commission's Schools Collection, a nationwide project in the late 1930s that asked schoolchildren to document local history and tradition. That school account, preserved in volume 0220 of the collection, offers detail that official records alone rarely capture.