What remains at Gortacurra in North Tipperary is the western arc of what was once a circular enclosure roughly 24 metres across, its earth and stone bank worn down to about half a metre in height and two metres wide. A rath, as this type of monument is also known, was typically a defended farmstead of the early medieval period, its bank and external ditch serving as a boundary against livestock and opportunistic raiders alike. Here, the outer ditch, known as a fosse, is only detectable on the southern side, making it harder than usual to read the original shape of the place.

The eastern half of the enclosure has been largely destroyed by a field drain cut through the north-eastern sector, removing the very features that would otherwise have defined it. This kind of incremental agricultural damage is common across Ireland's ringfort landscape, where practical drainage work over the centuries has quietly undone what centuries of neglect had left standing. The site sits on flat, poorly drained upland pasture, the sort of ground that would have made farming difficult in any era. Notably, a second ringfort lies a short distance to the south-west, which suggests this upland area once supported more than one early medieval household in relatively close proximity. Gortacurra scholar Geraldine Stout documented the site in 1984, and it was subsequently recorded in the Archaeological Inventory of County Tipperary compiled by Jean Farrelly and Caimin O'Brien.