The site known as Forte Edward at Ardmayle is a roughly circular earthwork, about 44 metres across, defined by a bank with evidence of external stone revetment, that is, a facing of stone used to stabilise and retain the earthen rampart. Around the base of the monument, a slightly sloping berm, a narrow flat ledge running between the bank and whatever lay beyond it, is itself enclosed by a low rubble retaining wall. The wall, best preserved on the southern to west-north-west arc, has partially collapsed on the opposite side, spilling into the surrounding field. Taken together, these elements suggest something that was once carefully shaped and maintained.

What makes the place genuinely curious is what occupies its interior. Concealed now by overgrowth and bushes, the eastern quadrant contains a folly, a deliberately constructed ornamental structure of the kind that Georgian and Victorian landowners sometimes built to add picturesque drama or historical atmosphere to their demesnes. This particular folly has absorbed architectural fragments, pieces of carved or dressed stonework that clearly originated elsewhere, while further fragments were worked into the lower revetment wall to the west and have since tumbled downslope. The name Forte Edward suggests the whole arrangement was conceived as a romantic evocation of a fortification, a faux ruin or mock fortification designed to be viewed as a landscape feature from a house or garden. The rubble retaining wall at the base of the bank may itself be part of this same landscaping project, a counter revetment that gave the earthwork a more finished, composed appearance when seen from ground level.