The tombs are of the wedge type, a form of megalithic monument common in Ireland during the later Neolithic and early Bronze Age, characterised by a roofed stone gallery that tapers from a wider, taller entrance end down to a narrower rear. That they were built here at all, on land characterised by rock outcrop, rough boggy pasture, and steep slopes, suggests the location carried significance well beyond practical convenience.

The best-preserved of the three northern tombs sits on a small natural platform and retains much of its original structure. Its gallery runs east to west, measuring just over a metre wide at the entrance and narrowing to 70 centimetres at the far end, with a total length of four metres. Outer walling runs along both sides, connected to the gallery front by single upright slabs, and loose cairn material, the remnants of a covering mound, was found extending beyond these walls. A prostrate stone near the entrance may once have divided the interior into segments, a feature occasionally seen in wedge tombs. One roof-stone, though shattered, still covers the rear of the gallery; the back-stone, however, is gone. When the tomb was excavated, a small quantity of cremated bone was recovered from inside the gallery, a quiet reminder that this narrow stone passage was built, ultimately, to receive the dead. The three northern tombs as a group were excavated by Herity in 1967, and the site is documented in detail in the survey of the megalithic tombs of Ireland compiled by Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin, published in 1982. The townland name in Irish, Coomatloukane, anchors the site in a linguistic landscape as old as the stones themselves.

The mountain spur on which the tombs sit looks south across the mouth of the Kenmare river towards the Beara Peninsula, a broad, open prospect that would have been visible to anyone approaching the tombs from below. Much of the surrounding land has been reclaimed over the generations, but the immediate area around the tombs has been left largely undisturbed, meaning the ground conditions underfoot remain rough and uneven, as they have always been.