When surveyors visited in 1997, the interior was so thoroughly choked with the thorny shrub that getting a proper look inside was essentially impossible, which gives a reasonable sense of how undisturbed this place has remained.

The site is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the type of enclosed farmstead that was the standard unit of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century. This example takes the form of a raised circular area approximately 35 metres in diameter, defined by a scarp, essentially a steep earthen bank or slope, that reaches an external height of around 1.8 metres at its northern side. The natural gradient of the hill amplifies the effect considerably, particularly along the south-eastern and southern edges, so the structure blends topography and human construction in a way that makes the two difficult to separate. A low internal lip survives along the western to north-eastern arc, and a drystone field wall has been laid along the top of the scarp on the southern and western sides at some later point. Part of the north-eastern scarp has been dug away, the kind of casual interference that has affected countless such sites over the centuries. What gives Curryaun a little additional texture is the remnant of a trackway that skirts the base of the scarp on the north-western to north-eastern side, flanked by field walls, and leads eastward to a ruined farmstead that was already standing when the Ordnance Survey recorded it on their six-inch map in 1838. Whether the track is as old as the ringfort itself is impossible to say, but it hints at a landscape that has been continuously, if quietly, in use across a very long stretch of time.