This is a wedge tomb, a type of megalithic burial monument common across Munster and the west of Ireland, built during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. The defining characteristic of the form is precisely what the name suggests: a gallery that tapers from a wide, open western end down to a narrow eastern close, orientated roughly towards the setting sun.

The Slieveowen example measures 3.7 metres in length, widening from roughly 30 centimetres at its eastern end to 1.35 metres at the western entrance. Four sidestones define the gallery to north and south, supplemented by two buttress-stones on the southern side and one to the north, structural elements that would have helped brace the weight of a capstone or covering material. Beyond the eastern end, three outer-wall stones are still exposed, hinting at the fuller enclosure the monument once had. The structure was recorded and catalogued by archaeologists Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin in their systematic survey of megalithic tombs across Cork, Kerry, Limerick, and Tipperary, published in 1982. At the western entrance, a hole has been dug at some point, the spoil from which now forms a low mound just to the west. Whether this was an early attempt at excavation or simple curiosity is not recorded, but the disturbance is a reminder that these monuments have attracted human attention, not always careful, long after their original purpose was forgotten.