Measuring approximately 33 metres in diameter, the enclosure at Carrick is one of those features that aerial photography has a particular gift for revealing, where centuries of ploughing and grazing have softened the banks to near-invisibility at eye level but left enough of a trace to read from above.

Enclosures of this type are broadly related to the ringfort tradition, the ringfort being a circular or near-circular enclosed settlement, usually dating from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, though many are earlier or later. What makes the Carrick site of particular interest is its relationship to a neighbouring monument: a ringfort lies just 86 metres to the west. Whether the two were contemporary, sequential, or functionally linked is not known, but paired or clustered enclosures are not unusual in the Irish midlands, where generations of farming families returned to the same rises and well-drained ground across long spans of time. The views to the north, east, and west from this low prominence would have made it a practical as well as a habitual choice.