Because the enclosure sits on a slope rather than level ground, the earth inside was built up on the lower, east-south-east side to create a flat living surface, a practical adjustment that hints at the care and planning that went into even a modest rural settlement of early medieval Ireland.

A rath, as this type of earthwork is also known, is a ringfort formed from a circular bank of earth rather than stone, typically enclosing a family farmstead during the early medieval period, roughly 500 to 1000 AD. This example at Carrigogna sits in rough pasture on a break in an east-south-east-facing hillside, set below the crest rather than crowning it. The enclosed area is about 25 metres in diameter, ringed by an earthen bank standing to a height of around 1.9 metres, with a shallow external fosse, essentially a ditch, running around the outside. Gaps in the bank to the north and south mark what were likely original or later entrances. Both the bank and the interior have since been planted with trees, which gives the whole structure a slightly secretive quality from a distance, the circular outline visible mainly as a dark ring of vegetation against the surrounding pasture.