It would be easy to walk past without noticing anything at all, and indeed for most of the twentieth century it registered on maps not as an ancient monument but simply as a rock outcrop. That misidentification, quietly preserved on the 1897 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, is itself part of what makes the site interesting. The boundary between Brackyle and the neighbouring townland of Coolnapisha runs along its northern and eastern edges, suggesting the feature was old enough, and prominent enough, to have shaped the administrative geography of the area long before anyone thought to ask what it actually was.

The site was formally identified as a penannular earthwork, meaning a ringwork with a deliberate gap rather than a fully closed circuit, during the Bruff aerial photographic survey in 1986. That survey, recorded as Bruff 117 (AP 4/3724), revealed a tree-lined earthwork open to the west-southwest, the trees themselves having grown along the line of the bank and thus inadvertently preserved its shape. Subsequent orthophotos taken between 2011 and 2013, and again on Google Earth imagery from June 2018, confirm the monument as an inverted C-shaped area measuring approximately 41 metres on its northeast-to-southwest axis and 37 metres northwest to southeast. A second possible enclosure lies roughly 130 metres to the northwest, catalogued separately as LI024-132, raising the possibility that the two features were related in some way, though the record does not go further than noting their proximity. The site was compiled by Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly and uploaded to the record in July 2020.

On the ground, the enclosure sits in working farmland, so access would depend on landowner permission. The tree cover that outlines the bank is its most visible feature at close range, though the overall shape is far more legible from above, which is why aerial survey was what finally resolved its identity. Anyone consulting the satellite imagery on Google Earth can see the form clearly, that open arc curving around the knoll, and it is worth comparing this against the 1897 OS map to appreciate how completely the feature was overlooked by earlier surveyors. The gap in the western side, a consistent feature across all photographic records, is characteristic of the penannular form and distinguishes it from a simple ringfort or cashel, the latter being a stone-walled circular enclosure common elsewhere in Munster.