Sitting on top of a low rise and looking out over a spread of wet, low-lying ground to the north-west, the earthwork commands its landscape in a way that was almost certainly deliberate. These ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Their circular or oval platforms, defined by banks and ditches, served as domestic enclosures for a family and their livestock, and their elevated positions were chosen as much for drainage and visibility as for any strictly defensive purpose.

The Carrowgowan example is oval in plan, measuring approximately 34 metres on its longer axis and just over 24 metres across. The raised platform itself is defined by a scarp, a steep earthen face, that reaches about two metres in height. Beyond that runs a fosse, the surrounding ditch, roughly five metres wide, and then an external bank that is still clearly legible on the southern and western sides, where it stands over a metre high on its outer face and incorporates a number of large stones along the western stretch. Towards the north and north-east, these features have been worn down to a broad terrace, and a later field fence cuts across the fosse and clips the external bank on that side. At the east and south-east, the original platform scarp has been quietly pressed into service as a field boundary, and the ditch and outer bank have all but disappeared into the surrounding ground. Where the scarp drops to its lowest point, around 0.6 metres on the north-east side facing the spine of the ridge, there is a plausible location for the original entrance, where the ground would have been easiest to cross. Inside, the surface is level. A small stony mound sits in the northern half of the interior, and a shallow square-ish depression, roughly two metres by two metres, sits against the western scarp; the origins of neither feature are entirely clear.

The blackthorn that rings the perimeter is already beginning to push inward at the south and west, slowly narrowing the open grassy centre. It is a common sight at Irish ringforts, where disturbing the soil was long considered unlucky, and old thorns have been left undisturbed for generations.