It measures roughly seven metres east to west and just under four metres north to south, defined by a drystone wall, dry-stone construction being a technique that uses no mortar, relying entirely on the careful placement of stones for its stability. That wall has largely collapsed, but enough survives to show it was never a particularly refined piece of work, built to a thickness of around 0.7 metres and standing perhaps 0.8 metres at its highest remaining points. The north-west portion of the interior was cut slightly into the hillside, a practical measure to level the ground, though the floor still slopes away to the south-east.

A break in the wall at the south-west marks what was once an entrance, with a short length of collapsed walling extending about two metres further to the west from that point. Enclosures of this kind in upland Kerry are generally associated with early pastoral or agricultural activity, used to manage livestock or to define a small working or domestic space, though without excavation it is difficult to assign a precise date or function to any individual example. What makes the setting at Derrymaclavlode particularly interesting is the cluster of related features nearby: a hut site lies roughly 45 metres to the west-north-west, and a second enclosure sits around 50 metres to the north. The proximity of these features to one another suggests this hillside once supported a small, organised pattern of use, the enclosure forming one part of a broader landscape of activity rather than an isolated curiosity.