It is modest in scale, roughly 25 metres across, and its bank has subsided to the point where the interior sits only slightly above the surrounding field. Yet the external face still stands to about 1.25 metres on the outside, and a shallow fosse, the drainage ditch that once reinforced the enclosure's boundary, runs along the western to north-eastern arc. A possible original entrance, about 2 metres wide, opens to the east. Field boundaries press in from the north and south, and the eastern arc, where a road skirts the monument, is so thickly overgrown that the earthwork seems to be retreating from view.

This is a rath, the Irish term for an early medieval ringfort, a form of enclosed farmstead that was the dominant settlement type in Ireland from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Thousands survive across the country in varying states, from well-preserved banks and ditches to barely perceptible cropmarks. The Dromcahan example belongs to the plainer end of the spectrum: a single bank, a single fosse, no elaborate outworks. Some drystone facing is visible on the external face of the bank to the north-west, though this appears to be a relatively recent addition rather than an original feature. What the site retains, despite its worn condition, is its position, chosen with the logic common to such enclosures, elevated just enough to command a view of the valley below without advertising itself on a prominent height.