It survives now only as a cropmark, the kind of ghostly outline that becomes legible from the air when differential moisture and growth rates betray what lies beneath. The circular shape is roughly 32 metres in diameter, with traces of an outer enclosing element still faintly visible, and a clearly defined entrance gap at the southeast. Ringforts, which are enclosed circular settlements typically dating from the early medieval period, were the most common form of rural dwelling in Ireland between roughly 500 and 1200 AD, and many thousands were levelled during land clearance over the following centuries. This one in Carnew is among them.

The 1838 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map offers an unexpected footnote to the site's later history. At the very location where the cropmark now appears, the map depicts an L-shaped building and a small square field to its south, suggesting that the levelled monument was not only built over but actively farmed and occupied well into the nineteenth century. A small stream running east to west crosses the field about 50 metres to the north, also visible on the same map sheet. Carnew Castle lies approximately 650 metres to the west, placing this unassuming patch of ground within a landscape that has been continuously shaped and reshaped across many centuries. The outline of the buried monument was first identified through earlier aerial photography, with the cropmark subsequently documented in detail.