A low, irregular mound of earth and stone, barely a third of a metre high in places, sits on a gentle north-north-east-facing slope with the Atlantic visible beyond it. Locally it is still called a fort, which is the more interesting fact, because the thing itself gives little away.

Ringforts, sometimes called raths, were enclosed farmsteads typically built during the early medieval period in Ireland, usually defined by one or more circular earthen banks. The one at Carrowmacbryan was recorded as a circular enclosure on the 1837 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, which means it was still legible as a coherent shape less than two centuries ago. Since then, quarrying has removed the entire north-north-east half of the site, leaving the surviving arc of mounded material, roughly twenty-five metres in diameter, with quarry spoil deposited across it. The original form, whatever its height or internal features, is largely gone.