It lies buried beneath the soil at the south-eastern end of a natural ridge, running roughly north-west to south-east, and its existence is known only because aerial survey or sub-surface investigation has revealed what the naked eye cannot. The field was under tillage when the site was visited, the plough passing over earthworks that predate any memory of the place.

Enclosures of this kind are among the most common yet least understood features in the Irish archaeological landscape. They can range from prehistoric ceremonial boundaries to the circular ringforts, known in Irish as ráths or lios, that were used as defended farmsteads during the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Without excavation it is rarely possible to say which a buried example represents, and Coolagorane offers no easy answers. What is recorded is the topographic logic of the site: the south-eastern end of a ridge is a position that would have offered both elevation and outlook, the kind of placement that recurs across Ireland wherever people chose to mark, enclose, or settle a particular piece of ground.