It is almost square, with gently rounded corners, measuring roughly ten metres east to west and nine metres north to south, its interior slightly more compact at around eight by eight metres. The boundary is an earth and stone bank, not especially tall at between half a metre and a metre in height, but solidly proportioned at nearly two metres wide. A two-metre entrance opens to the east, the direction most commonly favoured in early Irish enclosures, where the rising sun would have carried practical or ritual significance depending on the structure's purpose.

Enclosures of this kind, low earthwork rings defined by a bank of earth and stone, appear throughout Ireland and belong to a broad tradition of enclosed spaces that served many different functions across prehistory and the early medieval period. They were used variously for settlement, agriculture, animal management, or ceremonial activity, and without excavation it is rarely possible to say which applied in any given case. What gives the Aghowle example particular interest is its immediate context. Roughly fifty metres to the north-east lies a second enclosure, and close by is a clearance cairn, a mound formed by stones gathered up from surrounding ground during land preparation. The pairing of enclosures on upland ground, along with traces of organised field systems, suggests this was once a worked and inhabited landscape rather than a remote or marginal one, despite its current character as a quiet stretch of peaty ridge.