It measures about 36 metres north to south and 38 metres east to west, defined by an earthen bank once topped with stone. That bank, where it survives at all, stands only about half a metre high. Along the western and northern sides it has been almost entirely levelled; along the eastern and southern sides it is greatly disturbed. What remains is less a wall than a suggestion of one, a faint rim of earth quietly holding the outline of something that was once enclosed.

The place name Cahernablauhy carries within it a clue to what this might have been. The Irish word cathair, anglicised here as caher, refers to a stone fort or enclosure, typically a roughly circular structure used in early medieval Ireland as a farmstead or small settlement. This particular example sits on high ground near Ballinrobe, in a landscape that also takes in Lough Mask and Lough Carra, two large lakes whose shores preserve a significant density of early settlement evidence. Within the interior of the enclosure, traces that may represent the foundations of hut sites have been noted, though the ground has been worked and grazed for long enough that little stands proud of the surface. The combination of earthen bank and stone capping is fairly typical of enclosures in the west of Ireland, where builders often used whatever combination of materials the immediate ground offered.