A cashel is a type of ringfort built from stone rather than earthworks, and this one was sited to overlook a shallow grassy hollow directly below its walls, keeping grazing cattle visible to whoever held the fort while remaining invisible to anyone approaching across the upland. That combination of concealment and control, practical rather than defensive in any grand military sense, is quietly revealing about how early Irish communities managed their landscape.

The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp visited and recorded the site twice, in 1901 and again in 1915, and his descriptions remain the most detailed account of what the monument looked like before further deterioration set in. Writing in 1915, he identified it as the chief and oldest of four ring-walls in the area, calling it by two names that were apparently used interchangeably locally, Cahermoyle and Cahermore. He noted walls of fine masonry built in large regular courses, still standing over five feet high at the time of his visit, with a slight outward lean, a technique known as batter, of one foot in seven. The overall diameter he recorded was 122 feet, with an interior of around 105 feet. He also observed that there was almost no rubble debris inside or around the structure, which led him to conclude that the smaller stonework had been carted off for road-making at some point. A map produced by Robinson in 1977 names it Cathair Mhaol. More recent survey work found the outer wall face reasonably well-preserved, reaching between 1.3 and 1.9 metres in height on the south-west side, while the inner face has suffered considerably more damage. A gap of about 1.8 metres at the south-south-west, neatly faced on its eastern side, may represent the original entrance. Beneath the enclosing wall there are traces of an earlier earth and stone bank, suggesting the cashel was built on top of, or incorporating, an even older boundary. The site also sits within a substantial field system extending across the mountain, hinting that the whole landscape was once managed and occupied in ways that are now only faintly legible from ground level.