It belongs to a category known as five-stone circles, a type found almost exclusively in the Cork and Kerry region, and distinguished from the larger stone circles of the same area by their compact size and consistent layout: a pair of portal stones framing an entrance, three further stones completing the ring, and a recumbent stone, usually the largest, set opposite the entrance. At Inchireagh, the circle is complete, though the northern entrance stone has fallen inward, and the interior has accumulated field stones over the centuries, the casual debris of agricultural life accumulating inside something far older.

The circle's main axis runs northeast to southwest, an alignment typical of the five-stone tradition in Cork and Kerry, thought by researchers to reflect an interest in solar or lunar events along that corridor of sky. The internal measurement along this axis is three metres, giving a sense of just how modest these monuments are in scale; the upright stones, or orthostats, stand between 0.6 and 0.9 metres high and are no more than a metre in length. Small as it is, the structure was deliberately placed near the upper reaches of the Bandon, in pastoral ground that has changed relatively little in character since the Bronze Age, when monuments of this kind were erected across the Cork uplands. The site was catalogued by Seán Ó Nualláin in 1984 as part of his systematic survey of Cork stone circles.