What makes it quietly interesting is the way it has been eroded and altered over time, not dramatically, but in ways that tell a familiar story about how these sites are slowly absorbed into the working landscape around them.

A rath is an early medieval farmstead enclosure, typically formed by one or more earthen banks and a corresponding outer ditch, called a fosse, which together defined a defended or at least bounded domestic space. At Carnakelly, the defining bank survives in fair condition, with evidence of stone-facing still visible on its north-western arc. Two gaps, each about three metres wide, appear at the north-east and south, though these are considered modern breaks rather than original features. More telling is what has disappeared at the eastern and western sides, where quarrying has eaten into the enclosing element. A survey by Cody in 1989 recorded an external fosse and a causewayed entrance gap of roughly four metres at the south-east, the causeway being the raised path that would have crossed the ditch to form the formal approach. Neither feature now leaves any visible trace on the surface.