The surrounding landscape is mountainous bogland, the sea is effectively unreachable from below because of sheer cliffs on either side, and higher ground inland leaves the fort quietly overlooked, visible from above but not easily approached. The combination of inaccessibility and good preservation makes it an oddly intimate piece of prehistory.

The fort was constructed on a headland roughly 200 metres long, with the builders cutting their defences at the narrowest midpoint rather than across the full width. This technique, common in Irish coastal promontory forts, uses the natural geography to do most of the defensive work, leaving only a relatively short barrier to construct. The result here is a fosse, the ditch running outside the earthen bank, that is 8 metres wide and nearly 3 metres deep, with a round bottom and a counterscarp bank, the outer lip of the ditch, rising another metre or so beyond it. A line of stones along the inner edge of the fosse suggests that this face was originally revetted, meaning the earthen wall was reinforced with stone to keep it from slumping. The entrance causeway, 4.1 metres wide and defined on its eastern side by a low wall, crosses the fosse about 7 metres from the eastern cliff edge, and it remains clearly legible in the ground today. The enclosed interior measures roughly 100 by 66 metres, though most of it slopes steeply eastward; only the level, sheltered northeastern corner would have been practical for habitation. A freshwater stream runs through the bog nearby, which would have made the site at least marginally habitable despite its exposed position.