Megalithic tombs, built from large unworked or roughly dressed stones, served as burial places and likely as focal points for ritual activity during the Neolithic and early Bronze Age, roughly five thousand to four thousand years ago. That one exists at Derryhick places this quiet Mayo townland within a broader pattern of prehistoric activity that extends across the west of Ireland, where portal tombs, court tombs, and passage tombs are scattered through the landscape in numbers that still surprise.

Beyond its existence and location, the specific details of this particular structure, its type, its condition, and its dimensions, are not yet in the public domain. Mayo as a county contains a considerable variety of megalithic monument types, and without further detail it is not possible to say whether this example is a court tomb, which typically features a semicircular forecourt leading to a roofed gallery, or one of the other forms found in the region. What can be said is that the townland name itself, Derryhick, derives from the Irish and points to a wooded or oak-grove landscape, a reminder that the countryside these Neolithic builders moved through would have looked very different from the open bogland and improved pasture that characterises much of Mayo today.