These enclosures, typically circular and defined by earthen banks and ditches, were the standard farmstead of early medieval Ireland, built and occupied roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation, but this one in Carriganass sits at the more fragmentary end of the scale.

When the Ordnance Survey mapped this area in 1842, the enclosure appeared as an angular, D-shaped form roughly 32 metres in diameter, its southern edge pressed up against a field boundary. That association with a later field fence is itself telling; over the centuries, the earthworks of old raths were frequently incorporated into farm layouts, the banks repurposed as convenient boundaries or simply left to erode around the edges of working fields. Today, the surviving bank runs from the west around to the north, standing about 0.8 metres on the interior side and 0.6 metres externally, the slight difference in height reflecting the way the interior of the enclosure sits lower than the surrounding ground. Another enclosure lies roughly 150 metres to the west, suggesting this corner of Cork once supported a small cluster of early settlement, though the relationship between the two sites remains unclear.

The site sits in open pasture and is very poorly preserved by any measure. The remaining earthwork is subtle enough that without knowing what to look for, it would be easy to read the bank simply as a natural rise in the field. The slight depression of the interior is perhaps the most legible feature on the ground, a bowl-shaped hollow that, once noticed, makes the outline of the former enclosure easier to trace.