What makes it quietly arresting is the layering: an inner earthen bank separated from an outer one by a fosse, that is a defensive ditch, with a causeway and aligned entrance to the east cutting through both. A further earthen field bank wraps around the whole ensemble, also entered from the east, as if the builders wanted anyone approaching to do so on their terms.

The fort sits on the drumlin, those rounded hills of glacial till that give so much of Monaghan its corrugated, intimate character, and its position at the ridge's eastern end would have afforded reasonable visibility and a degree of natural elevation. The inner bank still stands to an external height of around three metres at the south, which is a substantial remnant for an earthwork of this kind. Inside the perimeter, at the northern edge, there is a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber of the sort commonly associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, possibly used for storage or as a place of concealment. At the centre of the enclosure a house-site has been identified, which anchors this as a place of actual habitation rather than purely a defensive or ceremonial structure. The combination of a defended enclosure, an underground passage, and a domestic building at its heart is characteristic of the ringfort tradition that shaped rural life across Ireland roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries.