The enclosure itself has vanished entirely, absorbed into the landscape over centuries, but the road appears to have bent itself around a boundary wall that no longer exists, preserving the ghost of a perimeter in tarmac and hedgerow.

What survives within that invisible line is enough to suggest something of considerable scale and significance. The long rectangular graveyard that now occupies the site is thought to be the remnant of the monastic precinct, and within it stand the ruins of two Romanesque buildings. Romanesque architecture in an Irish context generally means the round-arched, heavily carved style that flourished here during the twelfth century, and both structures at Ardfert reflect that period. One is Templenahoe; the other survives only as a fragmentary west end, incorporated into the fabric of St. Brendan's Cathedral. The cathedral itself, dedicated to the saint traditionally credited with founding the monastery at Ardfert, thus contains within its walls the remnants of an earlier church, the older building swallowed rather than demolished. The site of a round tower is also recorded here. Round towers, the slender freestanding belfries common to early medieval Irish monasteries, rarely survive intact, and Ardfert's has left only its location rather than any standing remains.