The site is a cashel, a type of early medieval ringfort built entirely from unmortared stone, and at 38 metres in diameter it is a substantial example. What sets it apart is a solid stone structure built against the cashel wall at its north-north-west side, something later in date than the ringfort itself and whose purpose has never been fully resolved. It may have been a lookout post, or it may have been a folly, one of those deliberate architectural fictions popular among landowners in earlier centuries who wanted a ruin that looked the part.

The original entrance to the cashel appears to have faced south-south-east, as was common in ringfort construction, though that gap has since been widened to take a gate. The mysterious later structure attracted enough local recognition to be marked and named simply as "Tower" on the third edition of the Ordnance Survey map, published in 1933, which suggests it had some presence in the landscape by that point, even if its origins remained unclear. The site was noted by T. J. Westropp in 1919 and again by McCaffrey in 1952, two researchers who between them documented a great many Connacht monuments, and neither appears to have resolved the tower question with any certainty. The ambiguity has simply persisted, neatly preserved alongside the drystone walls themselves.