The 1st edition OS 6-inch map, produced in the mid-nineteenth century, shows a complete circular enclosure; by the 1904 edition, surveyors were recording only a semicircular earthwork. Whatever erased the rest left no obvious explanation, only a surviving arc of earth-and-stone bank running from north through east to south, with its external fosse, a defensive ditch dug around the outside of the enclosure, still traceable along that same curve.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when they are earthen in construction, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a farmstead and its associated outbuildings within a raised bank and ditch. The Loughaun example sits on a low natural hillock in gently rolling countryside, a position that would have given its original occupants a modest but useful elevation above the surrounding land. The surviving portion suggests the enclosure was reasonably substantial, though dense vegetation cover had made any close examination of the bank or fosse difficult at the time of survey, leaving questions about its full dimensions and condition unanswered.