The enclosure at Kilparteen spans 74 metres across in both directions, defined by a low earthen bank, an ecclesiastical enclosure of the kind that typically surrounded an early medieval church and its associated community. The bank itself barely rises above the surrounding terrain, just 0.4 metres on its outer face, and a shallow fosse, a ditch running along the exterior, traces the outer boundary. To walk across this ground without knowing what you were looking at, you could easily miss it entirely.

Within the southern quadrant of this larger circle sits a smaller, square-shaped raised platform, and it is here that the site becomes quietly unsettling. A field report from September 1957, compiled by the Office of Public Works, noted small upright stones breaking the surface of the platform, likely grave markers. The platform is thought to possibly have been a burial ground, perhaps associated with a children's burial ground of the type known in Ireland as a cillín, an informal and often unconsecrated burial place used historically for unbaptised infants. A church site is also associated with this inner platform, though no standing structure survives. More enigmatic still is a possible cup-marked stone lying on the north-eastern edge of the platform. Cup marks are shallow, circular depressions carved into stone, a form of prehistoric rock art found across Ireland and Britain whose precise purpose remains debated, and their presence here raises the question of whether this upland ground was significant long before any Christian community settled it.

The site sits on a north-west facing slope in an upland landscape, which lends it a certain exposure and quietness. Visitors should be aware that the earthworks are genuinely subtle at ground level; the enclosure is far easier to appreciate with some foreknowledge of what the faint undulations represent. The small upright stones on the inner platform, and the cup-marked stone at its edge, are worth looking for carefully.