It is not a dramatic ruin or a celebrated monument; it sits on level ground in a quiet valley, close to the Argideen river, and it rewards the kind of attention that grander sites rarely demand. The circle around it is incomplete, its full complement of stones uncertain, and that uncertainty is itself part of what makes the place quietly arresting.

Multiple-stone circles of this type are a particular feature of the Cork and Kerry landscape, typically Bronze Age in origin and distinguished from the better-known five-stone circles by their larger number of uprights and greater diameter. At Knocks, somewhere between nine and eleven stones may originally have formed the ring; only five orthostats now survive, ranging from just under a metre to nearly one and a half metres in height. Among them are the axial stone and a radially-set entrance stone, the latter positioned so that the circle's main axis runs from northeast to southwest, a common alignment in Irish prehistoric monuments and one thought by some researchers to relate to solar or lunar events at particular points in the year. The internal measurement along that axis is 8.5 metres. At the centre, the split standing stone, 1.15 metres high and aligned to match the same northeast-southwest orientation, adds a further layer of formal geometry to what might otherwise look like a scatter of weathered boulders. Whether the stone fractured through frost, agricultural accident, or simple age is not recorded. A second multiple-stone circle lies roughly 1.4 kilometres to the north-northwest, suggesting this part of the Argideen valley was a place of some ceremonial significance during prehistory.