Running along the northern and southern field fence of that orchard is a semicircular arc of dry stone walling, about fourteen metres across, that is the surviving remnant of a cashel, the Irish term for a ringfort built from stone rather than earthen banks. The walling is distinct from the later field fence it has been absorbed into: roughly coursed with a rubble core, still standing around one and a half metres high and just under a metre thick. The site sits on an east-facing slope in Caherkeen, overlooking Coulagh Bay to the north-east, and the view across the bay would have made it a quietly commanding position, even if only half the original enclosure now survives.

Ringforts, whether built from earth or stone, were the most common form of enclosed farmstead in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the sixth to the twelfth centuries. This particular example, classified as a cashel, preserves its character most clearly in that stretch of walling where the rougher, more deliberate coursing of the original structure diverges from the utilitarian field fence around it. That the enclosed ground became an orchard is not unusual; former ringfort interiors across Ireland were often put to use as garden plots or small paddocks, partly because the sheltering walls made them practical and partly because local folk memory attached significance to such enclosures, sometimes making people reluctant to plough them. In a field to the east, there is also a possible souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber that was often associated with nearby ringforts, used for storage or as a place of refuge.