It is the kind of place that accumulates modern uses around it without quite yielding to any of them, which is perhaps why it has survived at all.

The rath at Rathcarreen is a roughly circular enclosure, measuring approximately 40 metres north to south and 37.5 metres east to west, set on a north-east-facing slope that was formerly pasture. A ringfort, or rath, is a type of enclosed farmstead common across early medieval Ireland, typically dating from around 500 to 1000 AD and defined by one or more earthen banks thrown up around a domestic interior. Here, the enclosing bank stands to a height of 1.8 metres and is accompanied by an external fosse, a defensive ditch, measuring some 3.1 metres in depth, with an outer bank running from the south around to the west. The eastern side has been partly levelled over time. Within the tree-lined interior, in the northern sector, lies a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber that would originally have served as a place of storage or refuge. A racecourse skirts the monument's eastern edge, adding to the layered incongruity of the site's setting. The rath carries a preservation order dating from 1976 under the National Monuments Acts, and it is formally designated as a National Monument, giving it legal protection against further disturbance.

The detail documented by D. Lavelle in an archaeological survey of the Ballinrobe district in 1994 suggests a site that retains considerable physical integrity despite the pressures of its surroundings. The fosse depth and the survival of both the inner bank and the outer bank to the south-west indicate that much of the original defensive arrangement remains readable on the ground, even where the eastern arc has been disturbed.