A cashel, as this type of enclosure is known, is a ringfort built from dry-stone walling rather than earthen banks, and the Burren's abundance of loose limestone made this the natural building material for early medieval farmers and their families. These circular enclosures served as farmsteads, the thick walls offering protection for people and livestock alike, and they remain scattered across the Burren in varying states of survival.

Caherconnell itself is a substantial example of the type, its walls still standing to a considerable height in places, enclosing an interior that would once have contained timber or stone structures for habitation and storage. The Burren's dry, rocky ground preserves such monuments well; without the deep soils that elsewhere allow collapse and burial, the stonework tends to stay where it was placed, settling rather than disappearing. The site lies within a wider landscape dense with prehistoric and early medieval remains, from megalithic tombs to field systems that have been in continuous use since the Bronze Age, making Caherconnell part of an unusually legible archaeological terrain.

The site operates as a visitor centre and has been the subject of ongoing archaeological excavation, which has uncovered evidence of occupation and activity across several centuries. The surrounding area rewards slow exploration on foot, with the grey limestone pavements, known as clints and grykes, giving the whole place an austere, almost otherworldly quality that is quite unlike anywhere else in Ireland.