The walls, still roughly 0.6 metres thick and 0.7 metres high where they survive, extend across an area of approximately 150 metres by 80 metres of rough hill pasture. What makes the site quietly arresting is the way it layers time: a more recent field system sits visibly within the same ground, meaning that farmers at some later point looked at these same slopes, found them workable, and imposed their own geometry on top of whatever came before.

Drystone construction, which uses no mortar and relies entirely on the careful selection and placement of stone, was the default method of field division across much of Ireland for centuries, and in upland areas it persisted well into the modern period. At Maulagowna, the individual stones tell their own story about technique. Some are set at right angles to the line of the wall, a method of bonding that ties the structure together from within, while others lie contiguous, running parallel with the wall's direction. Large stones protrude above the surface of the surrounding bog, suggesting that the ground has risen around the walls over time as peat accumulated, or that some sections have simply subsided. The small river to the north-east would have made this slope marginally more useful than the blanket bog further up the hill, and the Lough Inchiquin valley below offers a sense of just how marginal this land always was, even when someone thought it worth enclosing.