What it encloses is a cashel, the stone-built equivalent of the more familiar earthen ringfort, a form of enclosed farmstead that was the basic unit of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland. This particular example is subcircular in plan, measuring roughly 41.8 metres east to west and 37 metres north to south, dimensions that suggest a substantial enclosure by any standard. The wall is best preserved along its eastern arc, where the original stonework still reads clearly against the surrounding land.

Cashels of this kind were typically built and occupied between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, serving as the fortified homesteads of farming families across Ireland. The drystone construction, that is, stone laid without mortar, was well suited to areas where good building stone was available, and the west of Ireland provided plenty. The enclosing wall would have sheltered a household, its animals, and its stores from both weather and opportunistic raiding. That one survives in as complete a condition as this, in what is otherwise ordinary agricultural land, is a quiet anomaly. A modern house now stands just outside the cashel to the south, placing the ancient enclosure and a contemporary dwelling in close, unremarked proximity.