It is classified as a cashel, the term used for a ringfort built from stone rather than earthen banks and ditches, and at nearly fifty metres across in both directions it is a substantial example of the type. The wall, still standing to 1.2 metres and measuring at least two metres in width, is faced on its outer side with large, regular slabs laid with some care. The inner face is far less legible, and the upper courses show signs of repeated rebuilding over time, meaning what visitors see today is a palimpsest of interventions rather than a single original construction. The interior is level and empty, offering no obvious clues about the domestic or agricultural life once conducted inside.

A cashel of this scale would typically have served as a defended farmstead during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, when ringforts of both earth and stone were the dominant form of rural settlement across Ireland. An entrance 2.4 metres wide sits to the north-west, though whether this opening is original to the structure or a later modification is uncertain. Recorded by O'Connell in earlier surveys as a large cahir, an anglicised form of the Irish cathair meaning a stone fort, the site was also associated with a souterrain, an underground passage or chamber typically used for storage or concealment, which has its own separate record. The coincidence of name, size, and location makes it likely that O'Connell's "cahir" and Garrai Gallda are one and the same place, though the identification has never been confirmed beyond reasonable inference.