Most of what once defined it has vanished into the ground, leaving only a short arc of earthworks visible between the north-west and north. A visitor standing in the wrong spot might see nothing at all.

The site is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built and occupied mainly during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands of them once dotted the Irish landscape, though many have been ploughed out, built over, or simply worn smooth by time. This example in Carrownurlaur measures approximately 48 metres east to west and 43 metres north to south, making it a reasonably substantial enclosure. It was defined by two earthen banks with a fosse, a defensive ditch, running between them, a standard arrangement intended to demarcate a settlement and perhaps deter casual intrusion. Today, that outer bank and its fosse remain detectable only along the northern arc of the circuit; elsewhere, the surface gives nothing away. Inside the interior, a rectangular depression sits alongside two large boulders that appear to be natural features of the hillside rather than remnants of any structure. What the depression once represented, whether a building platform, a sunken floor, or simply a quirk of the terrain, is not recorded.