Drumlins, the low elongated hills left behind by retreating glaciers across Ulster, were practical high points in a landscape that was otherwise boggy and difficult to move through, and they were used by early communities as natural platforms for enclosures, farmsteads, and defended settlements across many centuries.

The site at Skervan measures approximately 33 metres north-northeast to south-southwest and around 30 metres in the perpendicular direction, making it a modest but coherent enclosure. Along the northern arc, the boundary takes the form of an earthen bank about three metres wide, rising roughly a metre above the interior and one and a half metres above the ground outside. Along the southern side, where the natural slope of the drumlin does some of the work, a scarp, essentially a sharp drop in the ground surface rather than a built-up bank, provides the definition instead. Beyond the northern stretch of bank there is an outer fosse, a shallow ditch or drain roughly 1.8 metres wide at the base and 0.3 metres deep, which would have reinforced the boundary and helped manage water. No original entrance has been identified, which is not unusual for sites of this kind where centuries of agriculture, vegetation growth, and earthmoving have obscured subtle surface features. The classification as a fort is broadly understood to cover the kind of circular or subcircular enclosures, often called ringforts, that were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a family farmstead rather than a military garrison in the modern sense.