What survives is a ring barrow, a type of prehistoric funerary monument in which a burial mound or flat circular area is surrounded by a shallow ditch, known as a fosse, and an encircling earthen bank. This one measures just 5.6 metres across, enclosed by a fosse only 0.15 metres deep and a bank standing a mere 0.14 metres high. By any measure, it has been almost entirely levelled, worn down by centuries of agricultural use in the surrounding pasture until it is barely distinguishable from the ground around it.

Ring barrows are generally associated with the Bronze Age, though some date to the Iron Age, and they are found across Ireland in considerable numbers, often in clusters or in association with other ritual landscapes. The Garrane example sits in level pasture, which likely contributed to its gradual erosion; without the protection of scrub, bog, or rough ground, low earthworks like this tend to suffer under the pressure of grazing and ploughing over generations. What once marked the burial or commemoration of an individual, or perhaps several people, now reads in the landscape as the faintest suggestion of a circle, a slight irregularity underfoot rather than anything commanding attention from a distance.