Thousands were built between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, and while many have been levelled by ploughing or erased by development, this example in County Sligo retains much of its original form, including a detail that most visitors to such sites rarely get to see: a clearly identifiable original entrance.

The fort is a roughly circular raised area measuring about 24 metres north to south and 25 metres east to west, enclosed by a bank of earth and stone that, though only about 40 centimetres high on the interior, rises to over three metres on the outer face, giving a sense of how imposing such structures once appeared from outside. Beyond the bank runs a fosse, the water-filled or dry ditch that formed the first line of enclosure, nearly six and a half metres wide, and beyond that a second external bank. At the west-northwest, a four-metre gap in the inner bank is matched by a causeway crossing the fosse, marking the position of the fort's original entrance with unusual clarity. What complicates the picture somewhat is a disused quarry cut into the northeast side of the monument, a rough rectangular pit roughly twelve metres by ten and three metres deep, which has eaten into the fosse and destroyed the outer bank along that arc. The quarrying is old enough to be itself long abandoned, though it is a reminder of how readily such earthworks have been treated as a convenient source of material over the centuries. From the east round to the west-northwest, the outer bank has vanished entirely, though the outer edge of the fosse can still be traced.