This is a rath, the most common type of ringfort found across Ireland, a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and ditch that once served as a defended farmstead for an early medieval family, probably sometime between the sixth and tenth centuries. What makes the Ardgehane example quietly interesting is the practical ingenuity visible in its construction: because the site sits on a slope, the interior has been deliberately raised on the south-west side to produce a roughly level living surface, compensating for the natural gradient of the hillside.

The enclosure measures approximately 39 metres in diameter on its north-south axis. It is defined by a scarp, essentially a cut or shaped face of earth, standing about 1.1 metres high, with a low internal lip of around 0.3 metres on the inside edge. Beyond the bank, a fosse, the ditch that typically runs around the outside of a ringfort, is most pronounced on the south-west to west-north-west arc, where it reaches a depth of around 0.8 metres, and becomes shallower as it continues around the rest of the circuit. A gap roughly one metre wide on the east-north-east side marks what was almost certainly the original entrance. A later field boundary runs along the outer face of the scarp from the north-west around to the west-south-west, suggesting that the monument has been absorbed into the field system of the surrounding farmland, as was common for these sites across Cork and the wider country.