What remains is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, an enclosed circular or oval settlement type that was built in enormous numbers across Ireland roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Raths were typically the homesteads of farming families, ringed by one or more earthen banks and ditches for status and security. This particular example is oval in plan, measuring approximately 46 metres north to south and 39 metres east to west, and it is in very poor condition.

The enclosing elements consist of a bank and an external fosse, a shallow defensive ditch running outside the bank. Along the north-eastern to south-eastern arc, a scarp, a natural or cut slope in the ground, takes over from the bank as the main enclosing feature. The site has not fared well against the pressures of agricultural use over the centuries. Field boundaries cut through the eastern and southern portions, and a quarry has been opened at the south-western edge, removing whatever survived there. Despite all of this, the oval outline can still be traced across the grass. Notably, another ringfort of the same type sits roughly 230 metres to the east, a reminder that these sites rarely existed in isolation; the landscape around Gortnahorna once held a small community of such enclosed farmsteads, their inhabitants living and working in close proximity across ground that today shows little trace of them.