Today, none of that is visible. The vegetation has won, the entrance is blocked, and a later field wall has been laid directly across the eastern side of the ancient structure, as if the land simply moved on without it.

A cashel is a ringfort defined by a drystone stone wall rather than an earthen bank, and this one at Caherkelly is a substantial example, measuring roughly 53.4 metres in diameter. When the antiquarian T.J. Westropp recorded it in 1919, he could still make out traces of an outer enclosing ring sitting some three to three and a half metres beyond the main rampart, visible along the south-eastern to south-western arc. By the time McCaffrey examined the site in 1952, that outer ring had effectively disappeared, but he could still identify the eastern entrance gap and the curious internal feature extending from it: a stone platform or walkway of boulders running about 7.6 metres into the interior, flanked by two parallel rows of stones forming what he described as an avenue or approach roughly nine metres long. The combination of a formal entrance arrangement and what may have been a paved internal path suggests this was once a place of some deliberate ceremony or at least considered design. Beneath the north-western quadrant of the interior lies a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage of the kind commonly associated with early medieval ringforts, likely used for storage or as a place of refuge.

The cashel sits in level grassland, which makes its circular wall relatively easy to appreciate from the outside, even if the dense interior growth discourages any meaningful exploration within. The later field wall overlying the eastern edge is a quiet reminder of how thoroughly one era's architecture can be cannibalised by the next.