The fields themselves are an odd assortment of shapes, semi-circular, oval, and subrectangular, which gives the whole arrangement an organic, almost improvised quality, as though the boundaries were drawn around the natural lie of the land rather than imposed upon it.

The system extends downslope to the south and southeast of the hilltop, and the low drystone walls that once defined each plot would have been a familiar feature of the working landscape here. A drystone wall is exactly what it sounds like, stone laid without mortar, relying on careful stacking and the weight of the material itself to hold firm. Most of the walls at Farranyharpy have since been levelled, casualties of later land reclamation, but a small number remain upstanding. Those that survive are modest things, typically around 1.8 metres wide and just 0.3 metres high, more earthwork than barrier at this point, worn down to low ridges in the grass. Much of what is known about the fuller extent of the system comes from aerial photographs, which reveal traces that are now invisible at ground level.

The proximity of the field system to the cashel is suggestive. Early Irish agricultural activity was often organised around just such enclosed settlements, and the irregular field shapes here, rather than the neat geometry of later planned cultivation, point to a way of working land that responded to slope, soil, and the contours of the hill itself. What remains at Red Hill is fragmentary, but the relationship between the enclosure at the summit and the fields spreading away from it gives a sense of a small community that once made deliberate use of this particular piece of ground.