Most ringforts, the circular enclosed farmsteads that dot the Irish landscape by the tens of thousands and date largely to the early medieval period, consist of a single bank and ditch. The one at Curraghalicky goes considerably further, presenting a visitor with a raised central area defined by a scarp, then a fosse (a defensive ditch), then two concentric earthen banks with another fosse between them, and finally a shallow outer ditch beyond that. The total diameter runs to around forty metres. That accumulation of concentric earthworks, each one an additional obstacle to anyone approaching uninvited, places this example among the more elaborately defended of its type.

The site sits in rolling pasture, and its dimensions give a reasonable sense of its original ambition. The inner bank still stands to roughly 1.45 metres on the north, south, and west sides; the outer bank, preserved mainly to the north-east, reaches about 0.9 metres. The scarp that defines the central raised platform rises to around 1.3 metres. These are not towering structures, but earthworks of this complexity required sustained communal effort to construct and would have signalled considerable status on the part of whoever commissioned them. Multivallate ringforts, those with more than one enclosing bank, are generally associated with higher-ranking individuals in early Irish society, distinguishing their occupants from those who made do with a simpler, single-bank enclosure.

The enclosure is now heavily overgrown with bushes, which both obscures the interior and, in a roundabout way, helps to preserve the earthworks beneath from more disruptive agricultural interference. Picking out the separate banks and fosses through the vegetation requires some patience, but the underlying geometry of the place, concentric, deliberate, and still legible after more than a thousand years in a West Cork field, rewards the effort.