The name is understandable. Rising five metres with a smoothly domed profile and a diameter of more than 27 metres, it looks deliberate, commanding, and old in a way that invites martial explanations. But what the locals have long called Doomore Fort is almost certainly a bowl barrow, a type of prehistoric funerary monument in which a rounded mound, typically encircled by a ditch or fosse, marks a burial. The "fort" label is something of a red herring, though a persistent one: it appears on Ordnance Survey maps from both 1838 and 1920.

The mound itself is composed of earth and stone, visible where a section of the western slope has eroded away over time. Around its base runs a broad, shallow fosse, a surrounding ditch between five and eight metres wide depending on the compass point, and the fact that it sits slightly lower than the exterior ground level suggests it is an original feature of the monument rather than simply a gap that opened up between the mound and later field boundaries. Those field boundaries are now woven into the landscape around it: an earthen fence follows the outer edge of the fosse on the western half, and a stone wall takes over on the east. Hawthorn bushes ring the enclosing fence, and gorse has taken hold on the southern slope of the mound itself. The surrounding pasture is mixed with stretches of bog, giving the whole locality an open, unenclosed quality that makes the mound's prominence all the more noticeable.

What makes the setting quietly remarkable is what can be seen from it. To the north on a clear day, the horizon carries the outline of Knocknarae in County Sligo, the hill famously crowned by Maeve's cairn, a massive unexcavated passage tomb mound associated in legend with the queen of Connacht. To the northwest, the flat-topped escarpment of Ben Bulben is visible. Whether the people who raised this mound were aware of, or in any way connected to, those distant monuments is unknown, but the alignment of visible prehistoric landmarks from a single high point gives the place an atmosphere that goes well beyond a misnamed field feature.