At roughly fifteen metres across, with a bank no higher than thirty centimetres, it is easy to dismiss as a random scattering of boulders, and indeed that possibility has never been entirely ruled out. What makes it stranger still is that for much of its recorded life it has been simultaneously two things at once, an accident of Ordnance Survey mapping having conjured a phantom fort on the hillside and caused the ring-cairn to be labelled variously as a stone circle, a ringfort, and something else entirely.

The confusion has a precise origin. When an Ordnance Surveyor first plotted the monument, he placed it slightly to the south-west of its actual position, then corrected himself by marking the true location with a cross, the conventional symbol for a vanished site, and adding the words "Dun Gair (site of)" beside it. The result, as the archaeologist O'Kelly noted in 1944, was two apparent sites where only one existed. Dun Gair is no small matter to misplace. The Book of Rights, a medieval Irish text listing the prerogatives and tributes of provincial kings, names it as one of the seats of the King of Cashel, and it was reportedly among the forts associated with Brian Boru. A large cashel or enclosure may once have occupied this hilltop and since been levelled; Lynch noted as much in 1895. The ring-cairn itself, a type of prehistoric monument typically consisting of a circular bank or kerb of stones enclosing a central area sometimes used for burial, was recorded by Windle in 1912 as "Stone Circle M," its stones almost entirely grass-covered, none rising above a foot in height. O'Kelly, revisiting it in 1944, remained genuinely uncertain whether it was a cairn, a circle, or simply outcropping rock.

The summit sits at 136 metres above sea level and the surrounding landscape repays attention. Within a short radius of the ring-cairn lie Bourchiers Castle to the north, a drained lake to the east that once contained two crannóga, or artificial island settlements, marked on old maps as the Balie Islands, and a prehistoric enclosure to the south. On a clear day, Knockfennell is visible to the north-north-west, where a comparable ring-cairn occupies its own summit. The stones themselves are easy to overlook, which is rather the point; crouch close and the low earthen bank becomes legible, a partially preserved arc that rewards patience more than a casual glance.