These burnt mounds, found in their thousands across the island, are generally interpreted as cooking sites, where stones were heated in fire and dropped into water-filled troughs to bring them to the boil. The evidence of that repeated heating is still visible here, in the heat-shattered limestone fragments that make up the mound itself.

The mound at Cappagh sits on a long, broad terrace and measures roughly ten metres east to west and eight metres north to south, making it a compact but reasonably well-preserved example. Its shape is somewhat asymmetrical. The north-west to east portion is the more substantial section, rising to around 0.75 metres and butting up against a rising rocky scarp on its eastern side. The western portion flattens out considerably, spreading to a low, sod-edged platform that barely reaches 0.25 metres at its outer edge. On the south-west side, there is a shallow hollow, poorly defined now but almost certainly the location of the original trough or pit. It faces directly onto a spring, which is precisely the arrangement these sites tend to require; proximity to a reliable water source was not incidental but central to how they functioned. Cattle using that same spring have eroded sections of the mound over time, which is how the internal composition of shattered stone and dark grey soil has become visible at the surface.

The spring that drew prehistoric people to this particular spot on Turloughmore Mountain is still drawing animals to it today, which gives the site an oddly continuous quality. The erosion that has partially damaged the mound has also, in a way, exposed its character more plainly than many better-preserved examples manage.