The enclosure is a rath, the Irish term for an earthen ringfort, and this one sits atop an east-west ridge with the particular self-possession of a structure that has outlasted almost everything built near it.

Ringforts are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, with estimates running to tens of thousands of surviving examples. Most date from the early medieval period, roughly the sixth to the tenth century, and served as enclosed farmsteads for a single family or household. At Carrigacrump, the circular interior measures 26.7 metres north to south, enclosed by an earthen bank that still stands 1.6 metres high, with a shallow external fosse, the drainage ditch that typically rings such structures, still visible outside it. The interior slopes downward toward the south, and the western half has become heavily overgrown, which is common enough in raths left to their own devices for centuries. More intriguing is a possible souterrain identified in the south-east quadrant. Souterrains are underground stone-lined passages or chambers, usually associated with early medieval settlements, and thought to have served variously as storage spaces, refuges, or means of escape. Their presence at a site is often taken as a sign that the enclosure was occupied rather than merely symbolic.

The rath sits in what is now agricultural land, cut off by a later stone wall that bisects the field corner. That wall, a piece of relatively recent land management, has inadvertently given the monument a kind of buffer, separating it from the grazed pasture that surrounds it.