The walls have long since collapsed into grass-covered banks of earth and stone, and overgrowth obscures what little stonework survives along the inner faces. Yet on the 7th and 8th of July each year, people still come here to perform "rounds", a form of ritual circumambulation in which a devotee walks a prescribed circuit around a sacred site while praying. The worn trace of a pilgrimage path encircling the knoll is still faintly visible, marking out a route that has clearly been repeated many times over many generations.

The structure itself is modest almost to the point of invisibility. Its interior measures roughly 4.6 metres east to west and 3.2 metres north to south, defined by a low earthen and stone bank less than a metre high. Writing in 1871, Cusack described it as the ruin of a small building measuring twelve and a half by nine feet, and interpreted it as a hermit's cell, one he believed was connected to the nearby church of Kilmakilloge, a few hundred metres to the south-west. A hermit's cell, in this early Irish ecclesiastical context, would have been a simple dwelling used by a solitary monk or ascetic who sought withdrawal from the world while remaining loosely affiliated with a parent church or monastic community. The 1846 Ordnance Survey six-inch map already recorded the spot simply as "Site of Cell", suggesting the structure had been a ruin for some time even then, though its sacred character was evidently well understood. Two cross-inscribed stones lie close by, one six metres to the east and another four metres to the west of the cell, and the lake immediately below, Lough Mackeenlaun, is regarded locally as a holy well. Holy wells in Ireland are natural water sources associated with healing or sanctity, often linked to an early saint, and it is common to find them clustered with other devotional features such as inscribed stones and the remains of small oratories or cells. Here, lake, stones, and ruined cell form a compact sacred landscape that has retained its living ritual use long after the original structure disappeared beneath the grass.