What makes the site at Carheendoo quietly odd is the way modern field walls have grown out from it, radiating away at the north-west and south-west as though the old monument were still organising the landscape around itself, centuries after anyone last lived within it.

A rath, to use the Irish term, was a ringfort: a circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks, known as raths when built from earth and cashels when built from stone, used across Ireland roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries as enclosed farmsteads for single family groups. The version at Carheendoo is a bivallate example, meaning it has two banks with a fosse, or ditch, running between them. Double-banked ringforts are generally considered to have belonged to families of higher social standing, though the evidence for this is inferential. The site is in fair condition, though not intact: the inner bank has been lost along its eastern and south-eastern arc, from roughly north-east-by-east around to south-south-west, leaving the outer bank to carry most of what remains visible, particularly from the north-west around through east to the south-west.