What remains of the ringfort at Carrownree sits on a gently westward-facing slope in County Sligo, occupying a D-shaped footprint that tells the story of its own undoing. A ringfort, or rath, is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically circular in plan and defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches. The one at Carrownree was once circular, but a field boundary running north to south was driven through its middle at some point, and the eastern half of the enclosure was subsequently levelled. What survives today is a slightly raised area measuring roughly 18 metres north to south and 13.5 metres east to west, its straight side formed by the remnant field boundary and its curved side by a wide, low earthen bank about 6.4 metres across and barely 0.2 metres high on the interior.

The evidence for what was lost comes from cartography rather than excavation. The 1837 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded the site as a complete circle, divided into equal portions by that north-to-south boundary, which gives a reasonably precise date before which the ringfort still appeared intact, at least on paper. There is no surviving fosse, the term for the external ditch that would typically have accompanied an earthen bank of this kind, and no trace of the original entrance remains recognisable at ground level. Whether the fosse was filled in, eroded away, or was simply absent from the beginning is not known. The surviving bank is modest enough that a casual observer crossing the field might not register it as anything other than a slight rise in the pasture.