It measures just 13.5 metres in diameter, its interior level and unremarkable, bounded by a low earthen bank two metres wide and less than a metre tall. There is no fosse, which is the defensive ditch commonly dug around enclosures of this kind, no identifiable entrance, and no trace of any structure within. It sits there, complete and sealed, offering almost nothing in the way of obvious purpose.

Enclosures of this general type appear across Ireland and can belong to a wide range of periods, from the Bronze Age through to the early medieval. Without excavation or closely associated finds, it is rarely possible to say with confidence what a particular example was for. They have been interpreted variously as the remains of ringforts, which were the farmstead enclosures of early medieval Ireland, as ritual or funerary monuments, or simply as stock enclosures. What makes this one at Gowle unusual is its position. Placed on a saddle between two higher points rather than on a commanding summit or a sheltered slope, it occupies an in-between space, neither fully exposed nor tucked away. The absence of a fosse and the apparent lack of any entrance in the surviving earthwork only deepen the uncertainty around its original function.