A rath, as these earthen enclosures are generally known, is a roughly circular bank-and-ditch farmstead of early medieval Ireland, typically built to define a family's domestic space and offer a degree of protection for livestock. This one at Cabragh measures about 28.5 metres across, its enclosing bank still rising to around 1.5 metres on the northern side, with fragments of stone facing surviving on the inner face at the north-east and possibly on the outer face to the north-north-west. The combination of earthen construction reinforced with stone cladding is a detail that speaks to some care and investment in the original building.

The interior holds further points of interest. Towards the southern side, slightly off-centre, the outline of an oval or subrectangular house is still legible on the ground, and low connecting banks run from its western and eastern sides towards the enclosing rath bank, perhaps subdividing the interior into separate zones for living and storage, or for separating animals from the household. On the south-western arc, a shallow fosse, essentially a ditch dug at the base of the outer bank to reinforce it, remains visible, along with faint traces of a levelled outer bank to the west. The original entrance appears to have been on the eastern side, where the bank dips low, though the gap has since been blocked with stone. Local tradition, recorded in earlier fieldwork, holds that a souterrain runs beneath the enclosure. A souterrain is an underground passage or chamber, usually stone-lined, associated with early medieval settlements and thought to have served variously for storage, refuge, or ventilation. A small disturbed area to the north-west of the rath may indicate some quarrying activity at an uncertain point in the past.