But the cairn at Noughaval is a deliberate construction, a heap of stone built and shaped by people, with a subcircular base measuring roughly 14 metres east to west and 13 metres north to south. The top is noticeably flatter than a natural tumulus would be, and at its northern edge it rises to around 2.5 metres, tapering to about a metre at the south. Someone has been at it since it was first raised: the cairn has been disturbed at some point in its history, leaving a low ridge, between 20 and 50 centimetres high, pushed out to the west and north of centre. Kerbstones, the upright or flat stones that define the outer edge of such a monument, are still visible intermittently along the arc from the east-southeast to the south-southwest.

The cairn sits within a large multiperiod field system, meaning the landscape around it carries the overlapping traces of many different eras of agricultural use. It commands wide views from north to southwest across the limestone, and it was prominent enough to be marked and named on both the Ordnance Survey 25-inch plan of 1897 and the 1920 edition of the 6-inch map, where it appears hachured and labelled simply "Carn". That cartographic attention is itself a small sign of local significance. The monument does not stand alone: another cairn lies roughly 62 metres to the southwest, and two hut sites sit within 60 metres in the same direction, suggesting this corner of Noughaval was once a focus of activity whose full character is difficult to recover now.