A cashel is a type of ringfort defined by a substantial dry-stone enclosure wall rather than an earthen bank and ditch, and this one in Cahermaclanchy is nearly circular, measuring roughly 31 metres north to south and 29 metres east to west.

The wall itself tells a story of selective survival. Where it runs from the south-west around to the north, it still stands to five or six courses of stone, with a double-faced construction between 1.3 and 2.1 metres wide. The internal face rises to about 0.8 metres; the external face to around 1.4 metres. Spreads of collapsed material, one to two metres wide, sit at the foot of both faces, indicating how much of the original structure has gradually slumped outward over the centuries. Moving around from the north-north-east, the wall diminishes into a low overgrown bank, and from the east-north-east southward it disappears almost entirely beneath a later field boundary, leaving only the outer face visible. A straight section of roughly 20 metres on the south-south-west side shares the same fate. Within the undulating rocky interior, a house site occupies the southern sector, suggesting the cashel's enclosed space continued to attract settlement long after the ringfort itself fell out of use. The site appeared on the 1842 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, already represented by hachures indicating a recognisable earthwork, and another cashel of similar character lies approximately 74 metres to the south. Both sit within a local relict field system and a broader multi-period agricultural landscape, suggesting this corner of the Burren was organised and farmed across several distinct eras, each leaving traces that complicate and enrich the one before it.