The enclosure at Cahermuckee is D-shaped, its straight side running roughly northeast to southwest for about eighteen metres, with the rounded portion projecting twenty metres to the east. It sits raised nearly two metres above the surrounding ground, and a steep fall to the north gives it a quietly defensive quality, the kind of positioning that would have made practical sense to whoever chose this spot.

The name Cahermuckee contains the Irish element "caher" or "cathair", a word generally used for a stone fort or enclosure, though what survives here is an earthen bank rather than a stone wall. The interior bank still stands about a metre high along its surviving arc from the east-southeast round to the south-southwest, and there is a narrow entrance, just one metre wide, facing southeast. That entrance width is notably tight, more of a controlled gap than a broad opening, which suggests the enclosure was built with some thought given to limiting or directing access. Earthen enclosures of this type are scattered across Cork and Kerry, and while they tend to be associated broadly with the early medieval period in Ireland, the specific history of this particular example remains unrecorded.