A turlough is a seasonally flooded lake, a feature peculiar to the limestone karst landscape of the west of Ireland, and the positioning of this cashel above one suggests deliberate placement with both water access and surveillance in mind. The cashel measures 34 metres in diameter, making it a substantial structure, though you would be forgiven for missing most of it entirely.

This is a cashel, a type of early medieval stone ringfort built from dry-laid stone without mortar, and what survives here is best described as a partial impression of what once stood. The double-faced drystone wall, meaning a wall constructed with two outer stone faces and rubble packed between them, is most legible on the western and northern sides. Elsewhere, vegetation has done a thorough job of reclaiming the structure, and the wall has sunk into the ground and overgrowth to the point of near invisibility. Associated with the enclosure is a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber typically used in early medieval Ireland for storage or refuge. A second cashel lies approximately 100 metres to the east-south-east, suggesting that this corner of Carrigeen once supported a cluster of enclosed settlements, though what relationship existed between them is not recorded. McCaffrey noted the site in 1952, cataloguing it among a series of similar monuments in the area.