This is a promontory fort, a type of enclosure found all around the Irish coast in which a headland or projecting spit is cut off from the land behind it, usually by an earthen bank or stone rampart across the narrowest point. At Kinure, erosion has worn that neck back far enough to expose its construction in cross-section, revealing that the connecting strip was deliberately raised to sit level with both the promontory and the mainland ground behind it.

The interior of the enclosure, which measures approximately 120 metres on its north-east to south-west axis and around 70 metres across, slopes downward toward the south, and the ground immediately west of the entrance has partially collapsed. What was once there, or at least traces of it, was recorded by the antiquarian T. J. Westropp, writing in 1914, who noted clear foundations of a house just inside and to the right, that is to the west, of the entrance, along with what he thought might be a second foundation to the left. Westropp was a prolific documenter of Irish earthworks and coastal sites, and his observations, made over a century ago, remain the most specific account of structural remains within this fort. Whether those foundations are still legible today, given the ongoing erosion and the ground collapse he himself observed near the entrance, is another matter.