The deposit is modest in scale, three metres long and half a metre deep, but what it represents is a direct, physical record of meals eaten, oysters prised open, cockles and periwinkles gathered from the shore. A midden, in archaeological terms, is essentially a rubbish heap, and this one sits directly beneath Dunnamark Fort, gradually eroding out of the cliff face with animal bones and several split stones visible among the shells.

The connection to Dunnamark Fort above gives the site its context, though the midden's precise date has not been established in the available record. What the deposit suggests is repeated use of this shoreline over time, with shellfish forming a reliable part of the diet of whoever occupied or frequented the fort. The split stones are worth noting: stone-boiling, in which rocks are heated and dropped into water or organic containers to cook food, can produce exactly this kind of fracture pattern, though without excavation that remains speculative. The oyster, cockle, and periwinkle shells point to intertidal foraging, the kind of low-effort, high-yield food collection that coastal communities across Ireland practised for millennia.