It measures roughly fifteen metres north to south and seventeen and a half metres east to west, its edges defined by a scarp running from the south-east around to the east. The interior is uneven, and a small depression, about two metres long and a metre and a half wide, sits in the south-east quadrant. Whatever this earthwork once was, the ground itself has not quite forgotten it.

Earthworks of this kind, where a raised area is delimited by a scarp rather than a built wall or ditch, can represent the remains of a wide range of past activity: a ploughed-down ringfort, a platform for a vanished structure, or simply the accumulated residue of long agricultural use. Ringforts, which were enclosed farmsteads typically built during the early medieval period, are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, and many survive today as no more than a slight rise in a field, their banks levelled over centuries of ploughing and grazing. The small depression in the south-east quadrant at Gortaroo adds a particular point of interest; such hollows within earthworks sometimes indicate a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage used for storage or refuge, though no such identification has been made here on available evidence.