Someone, at some point in the modern era, decided to build a small drystone cairn directly in the middle of it, one metre high and roughly two and a half metres across, neatly occupying the centre of a monument that predates it by several thousand years. The result is an ancient structure partially buried beneath a much younger one, the two superimposed in a way that complicates any straightforward reading of either.

The ring-cairn itself is a circular type of prehistoric funerary or ceremonial monument, broadly similar in form to a ring barrow but constructed primarily from stone rather than earth. At Knockranny, the outer edge is defined by a low grassy bank, while the interior face presents a rougher, more irregular stony scarp. The whole structure spans around eleven metres in diameter. A narrow gap of roughly half a metre breaks the circuit at the north-north-west, which may represent an original entrance or passage. The interior is slightly hollow in profile, a characteristic dishing that is common to ring-cairns and often associated with the removal or collapse of central burial deposits over centuries. In the south-south-east sector, a possible cist is visible; a cist being a small stone-lined burial box, typically used to contain human remains during the Bronze Age. That identification was noted by P. Gosling in 2013, and its presence, if confirmed, would place the monument within a well-understood tradition of upland burial practice found across the west of Ireland.

The modern cairn at the centre, though modest in scale, has obscured whatever original features once occupied that space, making it difficult to assess the monument's full extent or condition without closer investigation. It is the kind of incremental interference that accumulates around prominent hilltop sites over generations, each addition made without particular malice but leaving the archaeology a little harder to read.