The structure measures approximately 21.5 metres north to south and 19 metres east to west, and its wall, where it can still be read at all, rises no more than ten to twenty centimetres above the ground. Only at the north-east does the facing stonework, both inner and outer courses, remain visible enough to suggest the original wall thickness of around 2.1 metres, which was once substantial by the standards of such enclosures.

The cashel sits in drumlin country, the rolling, egg-shaped hills left by glacial deposition, a landscape that once offered early medieval farmers both shelter and a degree of natural defensibility. Over the centuries the structure has been put to more prosaic uses. A later field wall has been built directly on top of the inner wall-face along the southern through north-western arc, effectively cannibalising the cashel as a convenient source of ready-laid stone. Field-clearance material has been piled against the western wall, and thorn bushes have colonised much of the perimeter. Roughly 110 metres to the south-west lies a second cashel, suggesting this corner of Lakyle once supported a small cluster of enclosed settlements, though the relationship between the two enclosures remains unexplored.