The briars have grown to nearly two metres, the thorn trees have closed in around them, and the interior is, for the most part, entirely inaccessible. What survives of Cappanknochaun is there, somewhere beneath the vegetation, but the fort has effectively swallowed itself.

A ringfort, to put it plainly, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank or stone wall, used as a farmstead or homestead across early medieval Ireland. Cappanknochaun sits just above the 200-foot contour, with open views running particularly NE-SW across the surrounding landscape, which would have made it a well-chosen position in its day. The 1842 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map records it clearly, naming it 'Cappanknockaun Fort' and depicting an oval enclosure roughly 33 metres across its longer axis. By the 1920 edition of the same map, it had been downgraded to a 'site of', that quiet cartographic acknowledgement that something once stood here but can no longer be confirmed. The monument now occupies an irregular area of approximately 24 metres by 19 metres in the north-west corner of a field. Where the vegetation thins slightly along the eastern side, an arc of earthen bank becomes visible, its outer face rising around half a metre above the surrounding ground level, with a basal width of 3.5 metres. A short stretch to the south-east has been reduced to a low scarp. A small portion of the interior, also on the eastern side, sits slightly higher than the ground outside, which suggests the enclosing elements beneath the overgrowth remain at least partially intact. The fort, in other words, has not entirely vanished; it has simply become very difficult to reach.