A quarry has eaten into the enclosing elements along the western and northern sides, leaving only partial evidence of what was once a coherent defensive circuit. Yet even in this diminished state, the earthwork retains enough of its original form to read as a rath, the type of enclosed circular farmstead that thousands of early medieval Irish families built and occupied, typically between the sixth and tenth centuries. A rath of this kind was defined by a raised bank, a fosse or ditch cut into the earth just inside it, and an inner scarp, all working together to mark out a domestic enclosure rather than a military fortification in any modern sense.

The site sits in grassland in County Galway, with the Sinking River running to the south. Its subcircular plan measures roughly 44 metres north to south and 41 metres east to west, proportions fairly typical of a single-family rath, and there is a possible entrance on the south-eastern side, which would have been the approach from the more sheltered aspect. Neary noted the site as early as 1914, recording the local name Curraghaun Fort, which suggests the earthwork was legible enough at that point to carry a clear identity in the surrounding community, even if quarrying had already begun to compromise its western and northern edges.