A rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, was typically a raised circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and outer ditch, used as a farmstead during the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries. Here at Shronell, that basic form is still legible, though barely.

The enclosure measures roughly 55 metres north to south and 52 metres east to west, and its bank survives best along the southern and western arcs, where the external height reaches about 1.65 metres. The outer ditch, or fosse, is largely filled in, leaving a soft and poorly drained patch of ground rather than any visible channel. A possible original entrance, about 3 metres wide, may survive at the south-southwest. More intriguing is a raised area inside the enclosure, about 13 by 10 metres, set off-centre towards the east; this may represent the footprint of a house site, though it sits awkwardly at a field boundary, which has itself cut across the eastern sector of the monument. A wide channel crossing the north-western part of the enclosure is almost certainly a later drainage feature rather than anything original to the rath, as aerial photographs from the 1970s show it continuing well into the field to the northeast. Three further enclosures lie within 170 metres in different directions, which suggests this was once a more densely occupied corner of the landscape than it now appears.