A disused field fence cuts straight through it, north to south, and the eastern half of the enclosure has sunk so far back into the hillside that it survives now as little more than a faint rise in the ground. What remains visible is mainly the western portion, held together by a stone wall to the north and an earthen bank to the south, the latter faced with drystone masonry. The asymmetry gives the site an oddly provisional quality, as though the land has been renegotiating its boundaries one season at a time.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths or liosanna, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century. They functioned as enclosed farmsteads, the enclosing bank or wall providing security for livestock and household alike. This example at An Fhothrach Mhór is a univallate type, meaning it has a single enclosing circuit rather than the two or three concentric rings seen at higher-status sites. Its internal diameter is recorded at 28.5 metres, a fairly typical size. The complication here is that the surviving fabric is difficult to read cleanly. The stone wall to the north stands 1.1 metres high on the interior face but reaches 3 metres on the exterior, suggesting considerable earthwork behind it, yet in construction technique it closely resembles the ordinary field walls running alongside it. Whether the visible fabric preserves genuine early medieval work or has been substantially rebuilt over the centuries as agricultural boundaries shifted is not straightforward to determine.