The raised circular platform, measuring 21 metres across in both directions, is enclosed by an earthen bank that still stands 1.2 metres high, with the ghost of an external fosse, a defensive ditch, surviving to the south and east. What gives it a slightly more formal character is the entrance to the south-east, just 1.7 metres wide and framed on each side by a pair of orthostats, upright standing stones that would once have anchored a timber gate or doorway.

Ringforts, known variously as raths or lios depending on local tradition, are among the most common early medieval monuments in the Irish countryside, with an estimated 40,000 or more surviving in various states of preservation across the island. Most date to roughly the period between the sixth and tenth centuries, and they functioned as enclosed farmsteads rather than military fortifications in any modern sense. A typical rath like this one would have sheltered a family of some local standing, their livestock, and their outbuildings within the banked enclosure. The use of orthostats to define the entrance at Gowlane is a detail worth pausing over; it suggests a degree of deliberate construction that goes beyond a simple earthen scrape, and it gives the entrance a legibility that has survived more than a millennium in open farmland.