The site sits in pasture on the northern end of a ridge at Burriscarra, and what you are looking at is a rath, the Irish term for the kind of circular earthen enclosure that served as a farmstead and family enclosure during the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries. Thousands of these survive across Ireland, though few retain such a visible relationship with the later field system that grew up around them.

The earthwork itself is a raised circular area measuring roughly 47 metres north to south and 45 metres east to west, enclosed by an earthen bank, a fosse (a rock-cut or earth-cut ditch), and an outer bank beyond that. The inner bank stands about 0.6 metres high, the outer bank reaches 1.1 metres, and the fosse between them drops to a depth of 1.4 metres. A narrow entrance, just 2.7 metres wide, opens to the north-east, which is a fairly typical orientation for ringfort entrances in Ireland, often thought to face away from prevailing wet weather. The north-east to southern arc of the enclosure has been levelled considerably, and the fosse is most visible on the south-west. The site lies approximately 190 metres south-west of a second ringfort, suggesting this was once a landscape with a meaningful concentration of early settlement. The description comes from a 1994 archaeological survey of the Ballinrobe district compiled by D. Lavelle for the Lough Mask and Lough Carra Tourist Development Association.

The heavy overgrowing of the bank means the earthwork reads more as a subtle rise and hollow in the pasture than as an obvious monument, but the four stone field fences that extend from it make the site easier to locate and give a sense of how deeply it was incorporated into the working fabric of the land long after its original inhabitants were gone.