What survives today is not really what was there, and what was there had itself been severely reduced long before anyone measured it carefully.

Ringforts, roughly circular enclosures defined by one or more earthen or stone banks, were the dominant form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically serving as farmsteads for a family and their livestock. The example at Cúil An Bhuacaigh sat on a south-facing slope in pasture and was, by University College Cork's own account, a stone fort with two possible ramparts, its interior measuring around 110 feet across and its outer diameter stretching to roughly 275 feet. Local tradition held that there were originally three concentric rings, which would have made it a relatively substantial structure. In May 1952, it was almost completely cleared away. When the site was inspected again in May 1986, a circular area approximately 42.6 metres by 42.8 metres could still be made out, defined by a low earthen bank visible to the north-east and south-east, though elsewhere that bank was buried under field clearance material. Then, in August and September of 1990, the surviving bank was levelled. Material from it and from the surrounding surface was dumped into the interior, creating a new, smaller enclosure of around 22 metres by 19 metres, a shadow of what had been there before. The site also contains a possible souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage of the kind often associated with early medieval ringforts and used variously for storage or refuge. A preservation order was placed on the monument under the National Monuments Acts, though the sequence of events here illustrates how formal protection, when it comes late, can record the damage as much as it prevents it.