In 1998 it was buried under imported topsoil during land-levelling works, so what was already subtle has since become invisible. The mound sits in undulating, marshy ground, measuring approximately 14 metres north to south and 14.5 metres east to west, and rises no more than 0.44 metres at its highest point. No trough area is visible at the surface.

The structure is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking or processing site found across Ireland and Britain in their thousands, typically dating to the Bronze Age. The characteristic form is a horseshoe-shaped mound of heat-shattered stone surrounding a central pit or trough, usually timber-lined and filled with water. Stones would have been heated in a fire and dropped into the trough to bring the water to a boil. The broken, discarded stones accumulate over repeated use into the distinctive mound shape that survives. The site at Ballydwyer fits the broader landscape pattern identified by Michael Connolly in his 2008 doctoral thesis on the prehistoric settlement of the Lee Valley, which recognised the clustering of such sites in low-lying, well-watered ground throughout this part of Kerry. The proximity to a permanent stream would have been essential to the site's function, whatever that function was; cooking, brewing, hide-processing, and communal bathing have all been proposed by archaeologists over the years.