By 2004, just over a decade after it was first documented, the site could not be found at all, swallowed by a dense growth of rhododendron that had closed over the hillside like a lid.

The enclosure was recorded in 1993, when it presented as a roughly circular area about eleven metres in diameter, defined by the low, eroded remains of a bank, surviving to only about a quarter of a metre in height. An enclosure of this kind, a roughly ring-shaped earthwork boundary that would once have enclosed a dwelling or a small farmstead, is one of the most common monument types in early medieval Ireland, though most survive in open farmland rather than under heavy woodland canopy. This one sits on a terrace cut into a steep hillslope within what is now Glengarriff National Park, and it does not sit alone. A souterrain lies roughly forty metres to the east. Souterrains are underground stone-built passages or chambers, typically associated with early medieval settlement, used variously for storage, refuge, or both. A second enclosure lies about eighty metres further east again, suggesting a small cluster of related features on this wooded hillside, the fuller extent and character of which remains unclear.

The rhododendron that defeated the 2004 survey is itself a telling detail. Rhododendron ponticum, introduced to Ireland as an ornamental shrub in the eighteenth century, has colonised large areas of Atlantic woodland, particularly in the wet, mild southwest, and its dense canopy and root system can completely obscure earthworks that would otherwise be visible. What survives beneath it at Cappyaughna, whether the bank has eroded further or remains much as Connie Murphy described it in 1993, is an open question.