The name is the kind of detail that accumulates around prehistoric monuments over millennia, accruing folklore long after anyone could say what the structure was actually built for, and this one is modest enough that it could easily be walked past without a second glance.

Wedge tombs are the most numerous type of megalithic tomb in Ireland, built roughly between 2500 and 2000 BC, and they take their name from their characteristic narrowing profile, wider and taller at the entrance end than at the back. This example at Maulagowna is a compact specimen: the chamber runs about two metres in length along a north-east to south-west axis, narrowing from around 0.9 metres wide at the south-west end to 0.65 metres at the north-east. Each side is formed from a single upright stone, with the north-west sidestone now leaning inwards under the pressure of time and ground movement. A backstone closes the north-east end, though the bog has crept up around its outer face and obscured it. The roofstone, roughly two metres by 1.6 metres and about 30 centimetres thick, tilts gradually downward toward the north-east, following the natural logic of the wedge form. Close by, a cist, a small stone-lined burial box, lies just 2.5 metres to the south-south-east, and a cairn, a mounded heap of stones that would originally have covered or marked a burial, sits some 70 metres further in the same direction. The clustering of these features suggests the slope above Lough Inchiquin was used as a place of burial or ritual across an extended period of prehistory, each generation adding its own mark to the hillside.