What lies beneath the vegetation is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the type of enclosed farmstead that was built across Ireland in vast numbers during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands survive in various states of preservation, but this one in Drombanny has been swallowed so completely by dense scrub that its form is now almost entirely legible only on paper.

The site occupies a slight knoll above the poorly drained pasture of the Ballynaclough River valley, with the river itself running approximately sixty metres to the south. Its shape, a sub-oval roughly thirty-five metres across from west-northwest to east-southeast and about thirty metres north to south, was recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1924. The monument is defined by a scarped edge, meaning the ground drops away sharply around the perimeter to mark the boundary of the enclosure, a feature typical of earthwork ringforts where a raised bank and external ditch, known as a fosse, were used to delineate the farmstead and its associated buildings. Here the scarp is around two metres wide and half a metre deep for most of its circuit, though it shallows out slightly toward the north-northeast, where it reaches four metres in width, and there is a narrow gap of under a metre at the north-northwest that may represent the original entrance. The external fosse, around 2.6 metres wide, is still visible in places, though rubble has been dumped into it at the south-southwest, and further material obscures it at the north-northeast.

Accessing the site requires crossing private farmland, so permission from the landowner would be needed before attempting a visit. The interior slopes gently southward and, given the surrounding poor drainage, the ground is likely to be soft underfoot in all but the driest months. The scrub cover means there is little to see in the conventional sense; the most informative approach is to walk the perimeter and trace the scarp as it rises and falls around the circuit, noting where cattle erosion has softened the edge and where the fosse still holds its shape. The record compiled by Denis Power gives the clearest picture of what remains.