The bank reaches up to two metres at its highest point, and both it and the interior it surrounds are heavily overgrown, which gives the whole feature an air of having been slowly reclaimed by the landscape around it.

This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common class of early medieval monument in Ireland. Ringforts were typically enclosed farmsteads, home to a single family or small community, and were constructed in their thousands across the country between roughly the sixth and tenth centuries. The earthen bank, sometimes reinforced by a timber palisade, defined the household's space and offered a degree of protection for people and livestock. The Coolowen example is a modest one by the standards of the type, with a single bank and no recorded fosse, or outer ditch, noted in the sources. It sits in pasture, which is actually one of the better fates for such a monument; ploughed land tends to flatten earthworks over generations, whereas permanent grassland can preserve a profile for centuries.