A cashel is a ringfort built from stone rather than earth and timber, a form particularly associated with the rocky terrain of the west of Ireland, where limestone lay close to the surface and fieldstone was more readily available than timber. These enclosures, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century, served as farmsteads and family compounds for the Gaelic farming class, their circular walls defining a domestic world of cattle, crops, and kin.

The name Cahernalough preserves the structure in the very place name itself. The Irish word cathair, anglicised here as caher, denotes a stone ringfort, and its survival in the townland's name suggests the monument was visible and significant enough to organise local geography around it long after its active use had ended. Clare is unusually rich in such survivals, partly because the Burren and its surrounding areas offered stone in abundance, and partly because the relatively thin soils discouraged the deep ploughing that has destroyed so many comparable sites elsewhere in Ireland.

Beyond its classification as a cashel-type ringfort and its location in Cahernalough townland, the specific dimensions, condition, and structural detail of this particular site remain undocumented in any publicly available form at present. What can be said is that cashels of this type often feature a wide enclosing wall, sometimes with an internal wall-walk, and occasionally incorporate a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage used for storage or refuge. Whether any such features survive here is not yet recorded.