The earthwork itself is gone, levelled at some point by centuries of agricultural pressure, leaving no visible trace on the ground. What survives is its outline on the 1842 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, where a hachured circle, roughly forty metres across, was recorded by surveyors who could still see the raised bank that has since vanished entirely.

A rath, as ringforts of this type are commonly called in Irish placenames and early records, was typically a roughly circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, used during the early medieval period as a farmstead or settlement. Thousands were built across Ireland, and many have suffered the fate of this one, gradually worn down by ploughing until the soil holds no memory of them. The 1842 map catches Carrigdownane at a moment when the feature was still legible on a north-facing slope, its circular form clear enough for surveyors to record. At some point between that survey and the present, the last of it disappeared into the field.