What remains is a cashel, the Irish term for a ringfort built from drystone rather than earthen banks, and this one has been reduced over the centuries to little more than a rubble arc. Its circular outline measures roughly 24 metres in diameter, and while the wall has long since fallen, the inner and outer foundation boulders are still legible along the eastern and south-eastern arc, tracing the ghost of a perimeter that once enclosed a farmstead or the residence of a local landowner of modest standing.

Cashels of this kind were typically built during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, when stone was the practical building material of choice in areas where good timber was scarce. They functioned primarily as enclosed farmsteads rather than military fortifications, their walls providing security for livestock and marking the social status of whoever lived within. At Kilcooly, an entrance gap 1.5 metres wide survives on the east-south-eastern side, which is consistent with the eastward orientation common to many Irish ringforts. Inside the enclosure, a small hollow in the north-north-eastern sector hints at something beneath the surface, perhaps a filled-in souterrain, an underground passage or storage chamber that was often built into such sites, though nothing definitive can be said without excavation.