Two bastions, projecting at the north-west and south-east corners of the enclosure, suggest that whoever designed the complex expected it to come under sustained attack. That expectation was not unreasonable.

The barracks was one of several built along the Military Road, a route pushed through the Wicklow Mountains in the aftermath of the 1798 rebellion. The rising had exposed how effectively insurgents could use the remote glens and bogland as cover, and the road, along with the garrisons placed at intervals along it, was the British military's answer to that problem. The Drumgoff site, measuring roughly 38 metres in length and 7 metres in width, occupies a position chosen to command the valley below. According to local tradition, that commanding position worked both ways: Michael Dwyer, the Wicklow rebel leader who remained active in the mountains long after the rebellion itself had collapsed, is reputed to have laid siege to the barracks from the surrounding high ground on at least one occasion. Dwyer's ability to hold out in these hills until 1803 was precisely the kind of problem the Military Road had been designed to solve, and Drumgoff sits at the centre of that unresolved tension between garrison and mountain.

The structure today is unroofed, and the bawn wall and bastions survive in varying condition, but enough remains to read the logic of the original layout. The elevated setting means the valley views that once gave the garrison its tactical advantage are still very much present for anyone walking the area.