They did not find any, as far as anyone knows, but they left the chamber floor disturbed, and the monument has carried that small indignity ever since. The tomb itself, however, remains in remarkably good condition: a wedge tomb, the type of megalithic structure built across Ireland and western Europe during the later Neolithic and early Bronze Age, characterised by a long, slightly tapering stone gallery that is wider and taller at the entrance end. At Coonane, on a dry grassy terrace above the Barony River valley in west Cork, the whole structure is unusually well preserved, sitting quietly on the hillside with long views stretching south-east toward Glengarriff Harbour.

The gallery runs roughly north-north-east to south-south-west and measures 4.2 metres in length, narrowing only slightly from 1.1 metres at the entrance to 0.95 metres at the closed end. What makes this tomb immediately striking, even among well-preserved examples of its type, are the entrance stones. The southern stone stands 1.75 metres tall, the northern 1.15 metres; both are exceptionally upright and imposing for a structure in which the gallery itself is not especially large. A low jamb-like stone, just 0.35 metres high, stands close beside the northern entrance stone, a detail that adds an air of considered arrangement to the whole facade. The sides of the gallery are formed by three stones each, with neat outer walling set close against them on both flanks. Two roofstones survive, though neither now covers the gallery: one lies flat just west of the entrance, and a larger one, 2.5 metres long, rests at an angle against a southern sidestone toward the closed end. A faint curve of mounding still traces the eastern end of the structure. The tomb does not stand alone in the landscape; within a few hundred metres there are several hut sites, a standing stone to the south-south-west, and two enclosures nearby, suggesting this upland terrace was once a worked and inhabited place. Two further wedge tombs lie across the valley, roughly 1.4 kilometres to the south-east, as if the communities that raised these monuments understood the whole valley as a shared and significant territory.