When archaeologists from University College Galway surveyed the site in July 1983, they found a circular, steep-sided mound that would have served as the motte; a flat-topped earthwork originally measuring 16.4 metres across and standing 2.4 metres high. The northern and eastern sections remained intact at that time, but the southern and western portions had been quarried away when locals opened a quarry there in 1926.

The motte was separated from its accompanying bailey by an earthen bank and a shallow ditch, or fosse, on the southeastern side. The bank measured 3.5 metres wide and stood about a metre high, whilst the fosse beside it was 1.7 metres wide but only 0.2 metres deep by the time of the survey. There was a gap in the bank, though no corresponding causeway across the ditch, leaving archaeologists uncertain whether these were original features or later modifications. The bailey itself, likely oval in its original form, had been significantly altered by a road cutting through it from northwest to southeast, destroying any trace of its northern section.

What remained of the bailey in 1983 was a D-shaped platform measuring roughly 27 metres by 18 metres and rising 3.2 metres above the surrounding landscape. The interior was largely flat and featureless, save for traces of lazy beds running northeast to southwest; these ridged cultivation marks suggest the site was later used for farming, probably potatoes. Unfortunately, recent aerial imagery shows that even the surviving section of the motte has since been levelled, meaning this once-imposing medieval fortification has now largely vanished from the Galway countryside.