Of what was probably an original thirteen stones, only twelve remain accounted for, seven of them still upright and five lying flat as prostrate slabs. It is not ruin in any dramatic sense, more a gradual subsidence into the landscape, the kind of slow settling that takes millennia rather than centuries.

The circle at Gort An Acra belongs to a category of monument well documented across Cork and Kerry, where multiple-stone circles were laid out with careful internal logic. This one has a main axis aligned roughly north-north-east to south-south-west, measuring 7.5 metres across. It retains both its axial stone, typically the lowest and most deliberately placed stone in Cork-type circles, positioned opposite the entrance, and its entrance stones, which mark the threshold of the monument. The individual orthostats, the upright standing stones, range from 0.6 to 1.4 metres in length and reach up to 0.9 metres in height, modest by some standards but consistent with the regional tradition. The site was catalogued by Seán Ó Nualláin in 1984, whose systematic survey of Cork and Kerry stone circles remains the foundational reference for monuments of this type.

The setting itself is part of what makes the place worth considering. Positioned 1.5 metres west of the river confluence, in open moorland on low ground between two rises, the circle occupies a spot that would have been conspicuous without being elevated, oriented toward the landscape rather than dominating it. Whether the original builders chose the saddle for its sight lines, its proximity to water, or reasons no longer legible, the placement feels deliberate in a way that the sparse surviving stones do not quite obscure.