The positioning is deliberate in the way that early medieval ringforts so often are: not dramatically fortified, but placed where a household could see and be seen, watch the movement of cattle along a valley, and know well in advance who was coming. A rath, to use the Irish term, was typically the enclosed homestead of a farming family, its perimeter defined by an earthen bank and sometimes a surrounding ditch, or fosse. This one at Cuilmore measures roughly 24 metres north to south and 30 metres east to west, its boundary formed by a scarp, meaning a slope or raised edge cut into the hillside rather than a built-up wall.

The enclosing scarp is uneven in a way that tells a small story. On the eastern and south-eastern sides it barely rises above the surrounding ground, at around 0.4 metres, while on the southern and north-western arc it reaches between 1.7 and 2 metres, partly because the natural fall of the knoll does extra work there. A narrow terrace running along the base of the scarp on the south-east to south-west side may reflect later modification rather than original construction, and it remains uncertain whether a fosse, the ditch that would once have reinforced the enclosure, ever existed here, or whether any trace of it survives in these terrace-like formations. A field fence cuts across the interior just south of centre, and the section of scarp to its north is noticeably worn down, with part of the north-north-west segment dug away at some point. Inside, the ground is grass-covered, with a gorse thicket in the north-west quadrant and hawthorn bushes along the perimeter, and faint traces of cultivation ridges running east to west are still readable in the turf, suggesting the interior was worked at some stage, possibly long after the rath itself had ceased to function as an enclosure. A second enclosure lies approximately 60 metres to the south-west.