The structure here is a cashel, a type of early medieval stone ringfort defined by a roughly circular or, in this case, subrectangular enclosing wall. What makes this one worth a second look is the way it was built, and rebuilt, over time: part of its perimeter is a proper stone wall, while another stretch is simply a bank of compacted earth and stone, as though different hands, or different centuries, finished the job in different ways.

The cashel measures roughly 30 metres north to south and 23 metres east to west, and survives in uneven condition. Outer stone facing, still standing to between 0.6 and 0.8 metres, runs along the northern and eastern sides, while inner facing at the east is much lower, just a few centimetres in places. The wall itself is around 2.5 metres thick. Inside the enclosure, an additional internal wall sits on top of what appears to be an earlier bank, cutting off the north-western corner entirely, with one large corner stone still in place. That internal division hints at a structure that was modified significantly after its original construction, though when and why is not recorded. Two low, raised areas in the interior, one towards the west and one near the centre, may mark the footprints of vanished buildings. The cashel sits within a multiperiod field system, meaning the surrounding landscape carries its own layered history of land use stretching across different eras. By 1840, when the Ordnance Survey produced its first large-scale mapping of Ireland, a stone in this area was already marked and named "Carricklahan" on the six-inch sheet, suggesting the name had local currency long before any formal archaeological attention arrived. A second cashel lies approximately 100 metres to the south-south-west, close enough to raise the possibility that this was once a more densely settled corner of the Clare countryside than it appears today.