What survives is not the solid mortared stonework most people picture when they think of field boundaries, but something more skeletal: lines of upright slabs, spaced roughly one to two metres apart, running along the slope of the ridge like the ribs of something enormous and long buried. At their lower ends, peat has crept up and enveloped them, so that only the upper portions remain visible, tilted and weathered.

The complex covers an area of approximately 435 metres by 400 metres, a considerable expanse that suggests organised land use at some point in the distant past, when this hillside was open and workable rather than blanketed in bog. Exactly when these walls were constructed is not recorded, but their enclosure by peat points to a landscape that has changed dramatically around them, the ground becoming wetter and more acidic over centuries until the bog simply rose and consumed the lower portions of the structure. What makes the site still more arresting is that rock art, carved markings made directly onto exposed stone, has been recorded at the eastern end of the system. Rock art of this kind in Ireland is generally associated with prehistoric activity, and its presence here alongside the field boundaries hints at a long human engagement with this particular stretch of hillside above the Iveragh Peninsula.