Roughly 10.5 metres across internally, it is not a ring fort in any obvious, legible sense; the wall has largely collapsed into a low band of rubble, surviving to just half a metre in height in most places, with only short stretches of the inner and outer stone faces still visible, standing no more than 0.3 metres tall. The wall itself was nearly a metre wide when intact, suggesting something built with a degree of intent and effort. Yet nobody can say with any certainty where the original entrance once was.

The enclosure was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey, a systematic study of the Dingle Peninsula that catalogued the remarkable concentration of early monuments in this part of west Kerry. Circular stone enclosures of this type are a familiar feature of the Irish landscape, often interpreted as the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval families, though without excavation it is rarely possible to pin down a date or function with confidence. What survives at An Gabhlán Beag is a structure reduced almost entirely to its footprint, its purpose and history absorbed back into the land around it.