A gently raised, oval platform, roughly 29 metres east to west and 26 metres north to south, sits just slightly above the surrounding ground, its edges defined by a low scarp no more than 40 centimetres at its highest. The interior is dished and overgrown with scrub. There is no visible fosse, the defensive ditch that typically encircles such sites, and no obvious entrance. What looks, at first, like a slight irregularity in a field is in fact the remains of a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort enclosed by an earthen bank rather than stone.

Ringforts are among the most common archaeological monument types in Ireland, with tens of thousands recorded across the country, the majority dating to the early medieval period, roughly 500 to 1000 AD. They functioned primarily as enclosed farmsteads, the bank and ditch offering a degree of protection for a family, their livestock, and their dwelling structures within. The Cousinstown example is a modest one. Its defining scarp is low, its form oval rather than the more geometrically regular circular shape seen at better-preserved sites, and centuries of agricultural activity on the surrounding level ground have left no trace of a fosse. The scrub covering the interior makes it difficult to read what, if anything, survives beneath the surface.