Ring barrows are prehistoric funerary monuments, typically consisting of a central burial platform enclosed by one or more circular banks and ditches. This particular example is bivallate, meaning it has two such banks rather than one, and it sits in the floodplain of the Camoge River, which marks the boundary between the townlands of Rathanny and Ballycahill. The central platform measures around 26 metres in diameter, defined by a scarp and a wide fosse, the term used for the ditch that runs alongside an earthen bank. That fosse is waterlogged, which in wet pasture like this is likely to be a near-permanent condition.

The monument was already recorded on the Ordnance Survey's 25-inch map edition of 1897, where it appears as a circular platform with a wide bank, a berm (a flat shelf of ground between the ditch and the outer bank), and a gap on the eastern side. A post-1700 field boundary running roughly north to south cuts across the eastern portion, transecting both the fosse and bank, which tells us that the landscape was being divided up and farmed well after the monument had long ceased to serve its original purpose. The remains of a second outer bank survive only on the south-western arc, the rest presumably lost to time and agricultural activity. Rathanny is not an isolated site in this regard. To the west lies a group of eleven further barrows and a separate enclosure, suggesting this stretch of the Camoge floodplain was once a landscape of considerable ceremonial significance.

The site has been documented through aerial photography on several occasions, including oblique photographs taken in July 1968 and July 1969 as part of the Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography, and later Archaeological Survey of Ireland imagery from January 2003. It also appears clearly on Digital Globe orthophotographs from 2011 to 2013 and on Google Earth. Visiting requires crossing wet pasture, and the ground conditions mean that waterproof footwear is advisable regardless of the season. The eastern field boundary that cuts through the monument is worth examining closely, as it makes the phasing of the landscape legible in a way that is not always possible at sites of this type. Aerial views, freely accessible via Google Earth, give the clearest sense of the monument's full extent and circular geometry.