It is not much to look at by conventional measures, which is partly what makes it worth knowing about. The structure is a roughly circular enclosure, its interior measuring around 7.4 metres north to south and 6.6 metres east to west, defined by the collapsed remains of a drystone wall built without mortar, relying instead on the careful fitting of stone against stone. That wall has long since fallen, and what remains is a jumbled scatter, with the larger base stones still protruding from the bog surface and smaller stones spread across the sloping interior, which tilts down toward the north-east.

Enclosures of this kind appear across Ireland in considerable numbers, though their functions varied widely. Some served as small farmsteads or animal pounds, others had ceremonial or funerary purposes, and many remain difficult to date or categorise without excavation. The Gowlane example, modest in diameter and now substantially reduced in height to around 0.45 metres, gives little away. The bog that has crept up around the base stones is itself informative in a quiet way: it indicates the kind of slow, wet landscape transformation that has buried and preserved countless structures across upland Cork, keeping them from complete collapse while also making them difficult to read. The original wall thickness of roughly 0.55 metres suggests a fairly modest construction, functional rather than elaborate.