The structure measures about 34 metres north to south and 33 metres east to west, the collapsed stonework still reaching around 1.3 metres in height in places. It is a cashel, the Irish term for a ringfort defined by a stone rather than earthen boundary, a form of enclosed farmstead used throughout early medieval Ireland, roughly from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. What gives this particular example its texture is the accumulated evidence of later use layered over the original: large boulders dumped along the wall from the north down to the south, and field clearance stone piled against the interior of the northern wall, generations of farmers using the old enclosure as a convenient place to put things they needed out of the way.

Beneath the surface, the site holds something older and less casual. A souterrain runs through the interior, one of those dry-stone underground passages or chambers that were built, usually in the early medieval period, as storage spaces, places of refuge, or a combination of both. Their exact function is still debated, but their presence within ringforts is common enough across Ireland that they are considered a characteristic feature of the type. Running across the interior on a north to south axis, cultivation ridges also survive, the physical trace of repeated tillage, most likely lazy beds used for growing crops such as potatoes in the post-medieval period. The ridges cutting across the enclosed space suggest that long after the cashel ceased to function as a defended farmstead, the sheltered ground it offered was still being worked.