What sets Woodbed Rath apart is the degree to which it has survived. Where many comparable sites have been reduced to faint cropmarks or a single worn bank, this example retains three concentric earthen banks, each stone-lined, separated by two intervening fosses, the ditches that would have made any approach considerably less casual. The whole enclosure measures around thirty metres across, with a clearly defined entrance gap of four and a half metres facing north-east.

A rath, to give the site its Irish archaeological term, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by earthworks, most commonly associated with early medieval farmsteads and their surrounding cattle pasture. The name Woodbed Rath appears in a 1914 survey by Neary, who recorded it among local place features of the area, and the name has stuck even if its origins remain unexplained. Of particular interest is a probable souterrain in the interior, a souterrain being an underground stone-built passage or chamber, typically used in early medieval Ireland for storage or, in times of trouble, as a refuge. The combination of multiple banks, a well-preserved entrance, and a likely underground chamber points to a site of some status within the early medieval landscape of north Galway.

The fort sits on the summit of a hill amid undulating grassland at Kilnalappa, which gives it a naturally commanding position over the surrounding countryside, the same quality that would have recommended the spot to whoever first chose to build here.