The enclosure itself, roughly 95 metres in its longer axis and about 60 metres across, is defined by a grass-covered stone wall, the kind that has settled so thoroughly into the landscape that it reads more as a gentle ridge than a deliberate structure. What makes it quietly arresting is the way later field walls, running in a regular north-northwest to south-southeast alignment, cut straight across its interior, as though whoever built them either did not notice the older boundary or simply did not consider it a reason to deviate. The result is a palimpsest of agricultural decision-making, one set of lines overwriting another without quite erasing it.

Enclosures of this type, sometimes referred to in Irish archaeology as cashels or cahers when they have a defensive or settlement function, were built across a long span of prehistory and early medieval history, though assigning a precise date to any one example without excavation is difficult. The name Cahermakerrila itself carries the Irish word caher, pointing to a tradition of enclosed settlement in the area. This particular enclosure sits within what is described as an extensive multiperiod field system, meaning the surrounding landscape has been divided, rearranged, and farmed across different periods, leaving boundaries of different ages in close proximity. A second enclosure adjoins it at the south-east, suggesting that whoever originally laid out this part of the plateau was working on a scale beyond a single homestead. The site was reported to the National Monuments Service by Ros Ó Maoldúin, bringing it into the formal record of protected monuments.