Caherconnell is a cashel, a type of early medieval enclosure built from unmortared dry-stone walling, in which a farming family or minor lord would have lived alongside their animals and stores. The walls at Caherconnell are unusually well preserved, rising to a considerable height and retaining much of the inner facing that collapses or is robbed from most comparable sites over time. That survival alone sets it apart from the hundreds of more fragmentary ringforts scattered across the Irish countryside.