The arrangement is unusual enough to stop you in your tracks: walls radiating northeast, south-southeast, south-southwest, and west from one roughly circular boundary, with a further alignment running northwest to southeast across the whole system. It is the kind of organised, purposeful landscape that suggests people were not merely living here but actively dividing and managing land in a way that required planning and community effort.

The enclosure itself is substantial. Its internal diameter measures approximately 60 metres, and it is defined by a drystone wall, a construction technique using stone laid without mortar, that survives to around a metre in height and two metres in width. An opening in the northwest provides what was presumably the main point of entry. Aerial photography, specifically OS Flight 9 photograph 2271, has revealed something even more intriguing: a smaller central enclosure sitting within the larger one, a detail not easily visible on the ground. The interior is described as having uneven, stony ground, which suggests either structural remains, clearance activity, or both. The site was documented by archaeologist Gabriel Cooney in 1985, and later compiled for the national record by Geraldine Stout and Padraig Clancy.

Kilmashogue sits within the Dublin Mountains and is accessible via the Kilmashogue Lane car park, which connects to a network of forestry and upland trails. The enclosure sits on a naturally level platform on the northern slopes, which is part of what makes the location so apt: the flat ground would have made both building and farming viable at altitude. The uneven interior is best appreciated in low winter or early spring light, when shadows pick out surface irregularities that a summer canopy of bracken would obscure entirely. The radiating field walls, some of which extend across the broader landscape, are easier to trace from higher ground, so it is worth climbing a little above the enclosure before moving on.