The site measures fifty metres in diameter, and what survives is a much-reduced bank of earth and stone, a shallow fosse (the ditch that once separated the inner and outer banks), and a low outer bank beyond that. None of it rises much above half a metre now, and the original entrance has been lost entirely.

A rath, as this type of monument is known, is a ringfort of earthen construction, the most common form of early medieval settlement in Ireland. Hundreds of thousands were built, typically between the sixth and tenth centuries, by farming families who used the enclosing banks and ditches as much for managing livestock and marking status as for any serious military defence. The Carrowstrawly example follows the classic layout of a single enclosure with an inner bank, fosse, and outer bank, though it has fared poorly over time. A north-west to south-east field boundary now cuts through the monument, dividing it into two unequal portions. The larger section, to the north-east, has been levelled to the point where only faint traces of the inner bank remain. What the south-western portion preserves is modest but measurable: enough to confirm the form, if not enough to recover any sense of how the place once functioned or who occupied it.