In fact, the site at Barnabrack is now understood to be a passage tomb, one of those prehistoric monuments in which a stone-lined corridor leads to a central chamber beneath a cairn or mound, built by Neolithic communities who used such structures for collective burial and, likely, ritual. The mismatch between how the site has been labelled, remembered, and understood is itself telling, and it speaks to how thoroughly time and land use can obscure what was once a substantial structure.

When W. G. Wood-Martin examined the site in the late nineteenth century and published his findings in 1887 to 1888, he recorded a slightly raised mound measuring roughly 57 feet north to south and 45 feet east to west, formerly encircled with boulders. He also noted its traditional name, Coolcrave, and the local belief that it marked the resting place of those killed in a battle fought nearby. By the time Stefan Bergh catalogued the site in 1995, the picture was considerably reduced. What survives is a semi-circular level area of about 18 metres north to south, with remnants of a ring of close-set boulders defining the north-west, east, and southern arc. The stones hold up best along the north-western curve, where six or seven boulders remain in a curving line; five more appear to be in situ to the south, and a scatter of isolated stones protrudes from overgrowth to the east. The boulders themselves are modest in scale, ranging from roughly half a metre to 0.80 metres in height. The entire western half of the monument has been obliterated, partly by a rough track that now borders the site on that side, with the ground dropping away sharply beyond it. On the south-eastern and north-eastern arcs, the surviving stones have been absorbed into a curving field wall, so the boundary of an ancient tomb and the boundary of a modern field now share the same line.