The shape itself is the giveaway: this is an earthen ringfort, or at least a close relative of one, the kind of enclosed settlement that was common across early medieval Ireland and served as a defended farmstead for a family of some local standing. What makes the Coolartragh example quietly notable is how much of its structure survives, even in a degraded state, in a landscape that has otherwise been parcelled up and worked over by centuries of farming.

The enclosure measures roughly 32 metres on its longer axis and just under 30 metres on the shorter, a modest but coherent space. It is defined by an earthen bank that at its best-preserved point, to the north-north-west, still rises to an external height of around 2.3 metres, with a base width of over four metres. Outside the bank runs a fosse, which is simply a ditch, flat-bottomed here and about 1.7 metres deep, adding to the impression of a site that was once meaningfully defended or at least clearly delineated. The entrance, around 2.5 metres wide, faces north. At the south-east, the monument has not escaped unscathed: a field bank and drainage channel cut across it on a north-east to south-west line, truncating the original form and serving as a reminder of how routinely such sites have been eroded by agricultural improvement over the generations.