Its enclosing bank of earth and stone rises 3.7 metres above the surrounding ground on the outside, yet the interior sits at roughly the same level as the land beyond the walls, giving the curious impression of a raised ring with a sunken hollow at its heart. At nearly 37 metres across, it is a considerable structure, yet the thing that catches the attention most is a slight depression in the northern sector of the interior, identified as a likely entrance to a souterrain beneath.

The site belongs to a class of monument known as a ringfort, or rath, the most common surviving archaeological feature in the Irish countryside. These were enclosed farmsteads, built and occupied roughly between the early medieval period and the Norman arrival in the twelfth century, and they served as homesteads for farming families rather than as military fortifications in any conventional sense. This particular example is univallate, meaning it has a single enclosing bank rather than the two or three concentric rings found at more elaborate sites. The bank here averages 7.5 metres wide at its base, and the eastern entrance, some 8 metres across, is wide enough to have admitted livestock as well as people. The probable souterrain, an underground passage or chamber typically cut into the subsoil and lined with stone, may have served for storage or concealment; they are found at many ringfort sites across Kerry and the wider country. The details recorded here come from C. Toal's North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995, which catalogued the region's monuments systematically for the first time.