Ringforts, or raths, were the enclosed farmsteads of early Christian Ireland, typically circular areas ringed by one or more earthen banks and ditches, within which a family would have kept livestock and sheltered in timber or wattle buildings. This particular example sits in the townland of Carhooearagh in north Kerry, its Irish name, Lios an Chnoic, translating roughly as ringfort of the hill.

The site is a univallate rath, meaning it has a single enclosing bank rather than the concentric rings sometimes seen at higher-status examples. That bank is well-defined despite its modest dimensions, averaging around 3.5 metres wide at its base and standing roughly 0.9 metres high on the exterior, with a slightly lower profile of 0.6 metres on the interior side. The enclosed area measures approximately 22 metres north to south and 21 metres east to west, making it a reasonably typical size for a single-family farmstead. Two openings break the circuit of the bank, one to the north-east measuring about a metre across and a wider one to the south-east at 2.5 metres, the larger presumably serving as the main entrance. These details were recorded and published as part of the North Kerry Archaeological Survey by C. Toal in 1995, a systematic effort to document the concentration of prehistoric and early medieval monuments that survive across this part of the county.