What makes this particular site notable is its classification as a cashel, the term used for a ringfort built from stone rather than the more common earthen bank and ditch. Where most early medieval Irish farmsteads were defended by raised raths of compacted soil, a cashel used whatever the local landscape offered most readily, and in much of Cavan that meant stone.

The internal dimensions recorded here, around 25.6 metres north to south and 21.6 metres east to west, give a sense of the enclosed space: roughly the footprint of a large house and yard combined. This was the standard unit of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically home to a single farming family of some local standing. The original entrance is thought to have faced south-east, an orientation that recurs frequently in Irish cashels and raths, possibly for practical reasons such as morning light and prevailing wind, or perhaps reflecting more deliberate custom. The drystone wall that survives is described as substantial, meaning this was no token boundary but a genuine defensive and enclosing structure, its stones laid without mortar in the tradition that Irish builders used to considerable effect across the landscape.