It measures roughly thirteen metres along its longer axis and rises only about a metre and a third from the ground, the kind of feature that a passing walker would take for a natural rise in the terrain. A central hollow breaks its profile, and a field wall cuts across its north-western edge, suggesting that whoever built the wall either did not recognise what lay beneath or simply did not much care.

The mound came to light during the AranLIFE Farming Project, a research initiative running from 2014 to 2018 that examined traditional land use across the Aran Islands. It is composed of earth and stone, and at its western side, where briars have taken hold, a number of set stones are just visible beneath the vegetation. These may form part of the inner wall-face of a circular house, a type of dry-stone structure found widely across early medieval Ireland, though any firm identification would require closer investigation. The limestone pavement surrounding the site, a characteristic feature of the Aran landscape where thin soils give way to bare karst rock, has in many places preserved ancient field systems and structures that would have been lost elsewhere to deep cultivation or development. On Inis Oírr, the ground itself tends to keep things.