The external fosse, a defensive ditch originally dug to deepen the impression of the enclosing bank, has long since been pressed into service as a trackway along its northern and western edges. The ditch that once discouraged approach is now, in effect, the path in.

The fort itself is a rath, the most common type of early medieval enclosure in Ireland, typically built between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries as a farmstead or seat of a local family of some standing. An earthen bank, here standing to an internal height of 2.55 metres and an external height of 1.35 metres, rings a roughly circular area measuring about 51.5 metres east to west and 49 metres north to south. The interior is grass-covered and slopes gently downward to the east, following the natural lie of the hillside. There are two breaks in the bank, one to the northeast at just under three metres wide and one to the south at around 2.3 metres, likely original entrance points. The inner face of the bank is stepped along its northern side and, to a lesser degree, along the west, an unusual feature that may reflect a deliberate construction technique or later modification. In the northwest quadrant, there is a possible souterrain, an underground passage or chamber of the kind often associated with ringforts and thought to have served for storage or concealment.

The site sits on an east-facing slope in pasture land in north Cork. The fosse-as-trackway is worth paying attention to on approach: it is one of those small details that reveals how living landscapes absorb and redistribute old structures over centuries, smoothing their original purpose into something altogether more mundane.