The circular enclosure at Carrickaneha, roughly 29 metres in diameter, is what survives of a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was a farmstead type common throughout early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a raised interior enclosed by one or more earthen banks and an outer ditch. Here, the outer ditch, known as a fosse, has left no visible trace at all.

When the monument was described in 1971 and again in 1976, its enclosing bank was already in a compromised state. On the western and north-western arc it had been reduced to little more than a scarp, though this section remains the highest surviving portion. On the north-eastern to south-eastern side, the bank had been recut and incorporated into a relatively modern field boundary, effectively recycling an early medieval earthwork as a piece of agricultural infrastructure. A field boundary running north-east to south-west further cuts across the north-western quadrant, truncating the monument and leaving its interior, which is level and otherwise featureless, divided from a portion of its own perimeter. The site sits on a gentle slope facing west-south-west, with open views towards the south-east, south-west, and north, and another ringfort lies roughly 155 metres to the north-east, suggesting this corner of Westmeath was once a fairly settled and organised early medieval landscape.