A rath, to use the Irish term, is an enclosure defined by an earthen bank, typically built during the early medieval period as a farmstead for a single family or small community. This one at Carrick is modest in scale, roughly 27.5 metres across, but its position tells you something about the people who chose the spot: good drainage, open sight lines toward the Ox Mountains to the east, and two streams close enough to be useful without threatening the raised ground underfoot.

The enclosing bank, faced with stone on both its inner and outer sides, still stands, though the stone facing is thought to be of relatively recent date rather than original construction. Large boulders have been set against the external face, and the bank itself varies in width and height around the circuit, broader and taller on the eastern side than the west. Inside, the ground is roughly level, with a slight hollow in the south-eastern quadrant and faint traces of what may be cultivation ridges running on a north-north-west to south-south-east axis, suggesting the interior was worked at some point after the enclosure fell out of its original use. The entrance, wherever it once was, is no longer obvious; there are two low areas in the bank, one to the east and one to the south-east, but neither forms a clear gap, and the south-eastern one has been blocked by boulders cleared from nearby fields. The rath was tightly enclosed by field walls, probably during the nineteenth century, when agricultural reorganisation across the west of Ireland often treated ancient earthworks as convenient boundaries or quarry sources. Two of those walls, on the western and northern sides, are still standing. Blackthorn and hawthorn have taken root around the perimeter, as they so often do at sites like this, their dense growth discouraging casual disturbance in a way that may have helped preserve the bank beneath.