The earthen bank enclosing it is faced with stone on both its inner and outer surfaces, and that stonework so closely resembles the field fences running nearby that the boundary between ancient monument and working farmland has become genuinely difficult to read at a glance. It is an oddly domestic quality for a structure that is likely well over a thousand years old.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when they are earthen in construction, were the most common form of enclosed settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically serving as farmsteads for a single family and their livestock. This example at Boleynanoultagh is roughly circular, measuring 35 metres east to west and 32 metres north to south. An earthen bank rises to about 1.4 metres on the interior, and a fosse, that is a shallow external ditch, runs along the western to east-north-eastern arc of the enclosure, reaching a depth of around 0.5 metres. Where there was once a gap in the bank to the north-east, probably an original entrance point, a later stone wall has been built across it, sealing the opening and adding one more layer of reuse to a site that has evidently been managed and modified across many generations.