It stretches nineteen metres east to west, its smooth-faced stones still carefully laid despite standing only five to twenty centimetres above the ground in places. The wall is roughly ninety centimetres thick, and a scatter of additional stones and slabs across the surrounding strand hints that what survives is only a portion of something once considerably more substantial.

The wall sits just to the west of the O'Sullivan Bere's castle at Dunboy, a site with its own turbulent history as a stronghold of the O'Sullivan Bere clan and the scene of a brutal siege in 1602, following the Battle of Kinsale. The sea wall itself was most likely built as a barrier to protect the bank behind it from wave action and erosion. That bank, now visibly eroded, lies about four metres to the south, and traces of bog found beneath some of the base stones suggest the ground here has changed considerably over time, with older organic deposits buried under accumulated material. Four metres to the south of the wall lies a shell midden, the compressed remains of accumulated shellfish refuse left by people eating on or near this shore, which points to a long history of human activity on this small stretch of coastline.

The wall is accessible from the car park beside the strand, and the stones are easiest to read at low tide when the full extent of what remains can be traced along the beach. It rewards a slower look than the castle tends to get, particularly the careful coursing of the surviving stones, which speaks to the effort that went into its original construction.