The site features an oval-shaped motte, roughly 10 metres across at its summit and 21 metres at its base, rising about 5.4 metres high. This earthen mound occupies the northeastern section of what was once a larger defensive enclosure, separated from it by a wide but shallow ditch measuring just over 5 metres wide and about a metre deep.

The surrounding bailey, measuring 50 metres east to west and 90 metres north to south, appears to have had an earlier life as an Irish ringfort before the Anglo-Normans arrived and transformed it into their preferred style of fortification. The defensive perimeter consists of a low bank, an intervening ditch about 2.6 metres wide with a stone causeway crossing, and an outer bank roughly 5.5 metres wide and standing between 1.3 and 1.4 metres high, though this outer defence is absent on the northern side.

Historical accounts from O’Hanlon and O’Leary’s 1907 work describe a fort here with deep fosses and a level interior, suggesting the site’s defensive importance continued through various periods of occupation. The transformation from ringfort to motte and bailey represents a common pattern across Ireland, where incoming Norman lords adapted existing Irish fortifications to suit their own military traditions, creating hybrid structures that embodied both cultures’ approaches to defence and control of the landscape.