Set at the south-western end of a low spur of land in ordinary pastureland, this oval earthwork measures roughly twenty metres east to west and just under fourteen metres north to south, its outline now reduced to a degraded bank of earth and stone. It takes a trained or patient eye to read it as the deliberate enclosure it once was.

The site belongs to a category of monument that was once extraordinarily common across Ireland. A rath, sometimes called a ringfort, was typically a circular or oval enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, used during the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, as a defended farmstead or the residence of a local landowning family. Thousands were built across the island, and thousands have since been ploughed out, built over, or quietly eroded into the surrounding ground. The example at Cahermore has fared poorly by any measure, its defining bank so worn down that its full circuit is difficult to trace. The name Cahermore itself is worth noting: "caher" derives from the Irish "cathair", referring to a stone fort or enclosure, suggesting that the area may have a longer association with enclosed settlement than this single earthwork alone implies.