What made it quietly unusual was that it did not follow the typical ringfort pattern in every respect: no fosse, the defensive ditch that normally rings such monuments, was ever identified, and whatever entrance once existed had left no recognisable trace. Part of its boundary was not constructed at all, but simply followed a naturally occurring scarp in the ground, as though the builders read the knoll itself as a ready-made wall.

By the time anyone had occasion to formally record the site, in 1976, it was already in a compromised state, and the monument has since been levelled entirely. Ringforts, which are enclosed farmsteads dating broadly from the early medieval period, are among the most common archaeological features in the Irish landscape, but even common monument types can vanish quickly once agricultural pressure increases. What survives at Cartron now is essentially a ghost visible only from the air, where differential crop growth above the buried remains reveals the enclosure as a cropmark on aerial photography.