Its exact position has never been firmly established, and no physical trace of it is known to survive. That uncertainty is itself telling: the station was not a substantial tower but almost certainly just a mast, recorded as being in place by 1805, erected within a fort that already had buildings enough to house the crew. There was no need to build much, and so very little was left behind.

The station at Carlisle Fort was one link in a chain of more than eighty signal stations constructed by the British Board of Ordnance during the first decade of the nineteenth century, each positioned to relay warnings of an approaching French invasion fleet. Using a naval signal post, meaning a mast fitted with flags, balls, or other visual indicators readable at distance, each station communicated with its neighbours in both directions. The chain ran clockwise from Dublin Bay all the way around the Irish coast to Malin Head in County Donegal, and this particular station sat at a critical point: Roche's Point, the eastern jaw of Cork Harbour's mouth, lies roughly 2.4 kilometres to the south-south-east, and the fort's elevated south-eastern corner offered sightlines both to the next station south-west, at Robert's Head some 13.7 kilometres away, and to the one to the east at Ballynacotter, about 13.3 kilometres distant. When the French threat receded in the mid-1810s, the whole system was quietly abandoned. Carlisle Fort itself had been established by around 1607, though the complex seen today dates mainly from the 1860s, when it was extensively modernised as a site considered vital to British naval interests. It has been known as Fort Davis since 1938 and remains in active use by the Irish Army.

The two neighbouring stations in the chain fared differently. The Robert's Head tower survives in relatively good condition, while the Ballynacotter station, also in good condition, has been absorbed into a private dwelling. At Fort Davis, the signal station has left no comparable mark, absorbed instead into a landscape of rough vegetation, layered fortifications, and, immediately to the north-east, a large modern oil refinery. The mast that once watched the sea approaches has been replaced, in a sense, by rather more industrial infrastructure.