The structure is not a fort in any dramatic sense, but an embanked enclosure, a type of earthwork defined by a raised ring of soil and a surrounding fosse, the fosse being a shallow ditch that would have reinforced the boundary by providing material for the bank and making approach more deliberate. What gives this particular example an understated strangeness is its completeness: the entrance gap through the outer bank, the causeway crossing the fosse at the south-east, and the layered arrangement of inner bank, ditch, and outer bank are all still readable on the ground.

The enclosure measures roughly 33.5 metres east to west and 32 metres north to south, making it a substantial circular space. The earthen bank varies considerably in height depending on where you measure it, rising to around two metres on the western side where it is most pronounced, while the outer fosse is shallower, between 0.2 and 0.6 metres deep. A section of external bank to the north-east has been absorbed into a later field boundary, which is a common fate for prehistoric earthworks across Ireland, the farming landscape quietly cannibalising older structures over centuries. Immediately to the west sits a rath, a ringfort of the kind widely associated with early medieval settlement and farming in Ireland, and roughly 130 metres to the east-south-east there is a possible standing stone, suggesting that this corner of Corralara held significance across more than one period.