A cashel is a ringfort built from stone rather than earth, its enclosing wall constructed in drystone, without mortar, relying on the careful fitting of one stone against another. This particular example measures around 41 metres in diameter, which would once have made it a reasonably substantial enclosure, the kind that might have sheltered an early medieval farming household along with their livestock and perhaps a few outbuildings.

What survives today is fragmentary. A later field wall cuts straight through the monument at two points, crossing it to the north-north-west and south-south-east, the practical needs of post-medieval land division having little regard for what lay beneath or around. To the south-west, the original enclosing wall has vanished altogether, leaving no surface trace. The drystone construction that remains is poorly preserved, the kind of survival that asks a certain amount of imagination from whoever encounters it. Early medieval ringforts of this type were built across Ireland roughly between the sixth and tenth centuries, though many remained in use or were adapted long after that period. Thousands have been recorded across the country, yet each one represents a specific household, a specific patch of ground, chosen and worked by people whose names are now entirely unknown.