These circular or oval enclosures, built predominantly in the early medieval period as defended farmsteads, were meant to be entered and exited, to shelter families and livestock. The example at Carrowcrin in County Sligo has lost any trace of a gap or gateway, which may simply mean that time and disturbance have obscured it, or that it remains to be properly identified.

The site occupies a natural rise in otherwise flat to gently rolling ground, a positioning typical of ringforts whose builders favoured modest elevation for drainage and visibility. The enclosure is oval in plan, with an internal diameter of nineteen metres, and is defined by a bank three metres wide and about seventy centimetres high. Beyond the bank sits a shallow external ditch, two and a half metres wide and roughly eighty centimetres deep. Together, the bank and ditch would have formed a more imposing boundary when first constructed, before centuries of weathering reduced their profiles. The northern edge of the site has been partially damaged by quarrying, which accounts for some of the difficulty in reading the original form of the monument.