That modest, trade-linked nickname is now almost all that survives of it, along with a low scarp tracing a rough circle across the ground, roughly 43 metres across at its widest point.

Ringforts, or raths, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a circular area enclosed by an earthen bank and ditch, used as a farmstead and for the protection of livestock. The example at Killynan was recorded on the 1838 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map as a large oval-shaped earthwork, annotated on the OS Fair Plan map with its distinctive popular name. At some point after that first survey, the monument was levelled entirely, and it disappeared from subsequent editions of the mapping. What the OS recorded in 1838 as a clearly defined enclosure is now little more than a shallow edge in the turf, its outline only barely legible on aerial photography. The loss is not unusual; many such earthworks across Ireland were cleared during episodes of agricultural improvement, their banks spread and their ditches filled.

What lingers is the name. Ringforts accumulated folk names over centuries, often reflecting a remembered owner, a local trade, or a story attached to the place. The shoemaker's fort is one of the quieter examples, suggesting not a chieftain or a saint but an ordinary craftsman, someone who apparently left enough of an impression on the surrounding community that the name held long after both the person and the monument had gone.