A cashel is a type of Irish stone ringfort, typically enclosing a settlement within a substantial drystone wall, and this one is considerably larger than most. Its interior measures nearly 39 metres in both directions, with the outer wall originally rising to perhaps two metres on the exterior face, built from large horizontally laid stones, some reaching 1.2 metres in length.

The site's internal organisation is what makes it particularly revealing. Elizabeth FitzPatrick, writing in 2009, identified the remains of a late medieval house at the southern centre of the enclosure as the tighe mór, meaning the principal residence or great house, a phrase that reflects the Gaelic lordship context in which such compounds functioned. Around it are smaller possible house sites, and four D-shaped structures are set against the interior face of the cashel wall, two at the north-east and two at the south-east, suggesting ancillary uses such as storage or animal shelter. A curving wall, roughly 32 metres long, runs east to west across the northern interior, dividing the space in a way that implies careful, deliberate planning. The whole enclosure forms part of a larger multiperiod field system, meaning the landscape around it accumulated boundaries and uses across several distinct periods of occupation. A cairn lies just four metres to the south, and a cluster of hut sites sits about nine and a half metres to the west, so the cashel was never truly isolated but formed one element within a broader, layered human landscape. The site was already recognised by the first Ordnance Survey in 1842, which labelled it 'Caherwalsh' on its six-inch map, and the same name appeared again on the 1920 edition, suggesting the local placename had remained stable across generations. The land drops steeply to the east and more gently to the south and west, with a shallow ravine cutting across roughly 25 metres to the north, giving the ridge a naturally defined and somewhat commanding position within the surrounding pasture.