What remains is a circular earthwork roughly 35 metres across, its bank and outer fosse still traceable despite centuries of agricultural pressure and the levelling effect of open, workable land. A fosse, in this context, is simply a ditch dug to reinforce the enclosure's boundary, the excavated soil typically thrown inward to raise the bank above it.

This kind of monument is known as a rath, the most common form of ringfort found throughout Ireland, generally associated with the early medieval period, broadly the fifth to twelfth centuries. Raths were enclosed farmsteads, home to a single family and their livestock, and they appear in their thousands across the Irish countryside, though a great many have been lost to ploughing, drainage, and development over the generations. The Carrowmanagh example is described as poorly preserved, which places it among the more vulnerable survivors. One detail, however, holds some interest: a gap roughly 2.5 metres wide on the western side of the bank may represent the original entrance. Entrances to raths most commonly faced east or south, so a western opening, if that is indeed what this gap represents, would make the site a modest but genuine curiosity among its type.