The enclosure is roughly subrectangular, measuring around 20 metres north to south and 15 metres east to west, and by now it is poorly preserved, its bank worn down to little more than a subtle rise in the ground. What gives it a quiet interest is its position: it sits just five metres to the north of a ringfort, the two features close enough that their relationship feels intentional rather than coincidental.

A ringfort, sometimes called a rath, is one of the most common monument types in the Irish countryside, a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and ditch, typically associated with early medieval farmsteads and settlement. The enclosure at Cartron may have functioned in association with its neighbouring rath, perhaps as an annexe for livestock, a garden plot, or some other activity that needed to be kept separate from the main domestic space but close to it. This kind of ancillary enclosure is not unusual beside ringforts, though the precise relationship here remains speculative. The two features together suggest a small pocket of early medieval land use, now reduced to barely legible earthworks in the Galway landscape.