Most enclosures of this kind in Ireland were noted by nineteenth-century surveyors, even cursorily, but the one at Coolnapisha slipped past them entirely. It sat in its field, in pasture, unremarked, until the Archaeological Survey of Ireland caught up with it in 2008.

When ASI surveyors examined the site, they recorded an oval-shaped monument measuring roughly 17 metres north to south and 13 metres east to west. The enclosure, a general term for a defined, bounded area that may have served any number of purposes from settlement to ritual to livestock management, was constructed with considerable care given the difficulties of the terrain. On the south-western to north-western side, a counterscarp, essentially a secondary earthen or rock-cut slope used to define and reinforce a boundary, was cut directly into the underlying rock outcrop; it runs to about five metres wide and two metres high. On the opposite side, where the hillslope drops away to the north-east and east, the ground was deliberately built up to create a level interior, compensating for the natural gradient. A levelled bank survives in partial form along the northern arc, and a scarp defines the eastern and south-eastern edges. About 120 metres to the north-west, a burial ground sits in the same landscape, though no direct relationship between the two monuments has been established. Compiled by Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly and uploaded to the record in October 2020, the site remains unassigned to a specific period or function.

The enclosure sits on a steep east-facing slope with open views across a wide arc from north-east through east to south, which gives some sense of why the position was chosen, whatever its original purpose. By the time aerial orthophotography was taken between 2005 and 2018, the interior had become covered in scrub, and it is this vegetation that makes the oval outline most legible from above rather than on the ground. Visitors approaching across the pasture are unlikely to read the earthwork clearly until they are standing at its edge. The surrounding farmland is private, so any visit would require landowner permission, and the slope itself is steep enough to warrant care underfoot, particularly in wet weather.