It is a wedge tomb, the most numerous class of megalithic monument in Ireland, so called because the burial gallery narrows and lowers from one end to the other in a rough wedge profile. Most were built during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, somewhere in the broad range of 2500 to 2000 BC, and they tend to favour elevated ground on the western and south-western seaboard. This one follows that pattern faithfully enough, tucked into the mountain above Ballyrisode.

The structure is badly damaged, but its basic anatomy is still legible to a patient eye. The gallery runs roughly east-south-east to west-north-west and measures around five metres in length, with a width of less than a metre, making it a narrow, corridor-like space. Outer walling can still be made out, along with a number of buttress stones to the north and south of the gallery, which would once have helped support the whole assembly. Three roofstones survive, though all have shifted from their original positions and now only partly cover the eastern half of the chamber. There is no clear sign of the cairn or earthen mound that would originally have enclosed and protected the stonework, which is not unusual in a monument this exposed and this old.

Finding the tomb requires some effort. The shoulder on which it sits is now forested, which means the approach involves picking through trees rather than walking open hillside, and the monument itself offers no dramatic silhouette to aim for. What remains is low, scattered, and earthy, the kind of thing that rewards careful looking rather than a casual glance. The buttress stones and fragments of outer walling are the details most worth seeking out, since they give a sense of what was once a deliberately engineered structure rather than a random scatter of rock.