It is a cist, a type of prehistoric burial container made from upright stone slabs, and it occupies what would once have been the north-eastern centre of a cairn, a mound of piled stones raised over the dead. The cist itself is modest in scale, less than a metre across in either direction, defined by limestone slabs set on their long edges to form a tight rectangular chamber. Crude drystone walling extends the northern wall further to the west, suggesting something of the original structure's ambition, even if much of it has since collapsed or disappeared.

The limestone slabs that remain give a reasonable sense of the original construction. The northern sidestone measures around 0.7 metres in length and at least 0.4 metres in height; the southern is slightly larger, at 0.85 metres long and 0.5 metres high. A transverse endstone closes the eastern end, set between the two sidestones. The western endstone, which would have sealed the other end of the chamber, is no longer visible. Writing in 1913, the antiquarian T. J. Westropp concluded that the cist had been opened by treasure-hunters, a common fate for prehistoric burial monuments across Ireland. Whether anything was ever found, or what the chamber originally contained, is not recorded. The cairn into which the cist was built, and which would once have covered and protected it, has itself been reduced over time, leaving the burial structure exposed and partially dismantled on the hillside.