From the outside, the bank rises to roughly two metres, a substantial wall of compacted earth that would have made an impression on anyone approaching across open ground. Step inside, though, and the interior bank barely clears ankle height at a quarter of a metre, a reminder that ringforts, also known as raths, were designed to be read from outside rather than within. The gap in the bank at the north-north-east, about three and a half metres wide, marks the original entrance, oriented away from the prevailing south-facing slope on which the whole structure sits.

Ringforts of this type were the dominant form of enclosed settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically associated with farming families of some means who used the enclosing bank and external fosse, a defensive ditch, to protect livestock and signal status. This example at Coolygorman is roughly circular, with a diameter of approximately thirty-five metres, and its fosse runs to about two metres wide and nearly a metre deep. The record was compiled by Denis Power and uploaded in August 2011. It notes that surrounding field boundaries have since been removed and some of that debris tipped into the fosse, partially filling it. This kind of incremental damage, carried out not out of malice but in the ordinary course of agricultural tidying, is among the most common threats to earthwork sites across Limerick and beyond.

The site sits in pasture on a gently sloping field, and the dense overgrowth covering the interior makes it difficult to read the ground surface clearly. Visitors with an interest in early medieval landscape should expect to work a little to understand what they are looking at. The exterior bank is the most legible part of the structure, and walking the full circuit gives a reasonable sense of the original scale. The entrance gap at the north-north-east is identifiable if you move slowly around the perimeter. Access to ringforts on private farmland in Ireland typically requires the landowner's permission, and approaching any such site with care for the surrounding ground is sensible, particularly in wetter months when earthworks are most vulnerable to erosion.