The enclosing bank climbs to as much as 4.2 metres on its outer face, which is a considerable wall of earth and stone by any measure, and the interior platform sits noticeably higher than the fields around it. This elevating effect, where the ground inside the enclosure feels somehow lifted apart from the ordinary landscape, is one of the more disorienting qualities of well-preserved ringforts, and this one preserves it well.

A ringfort, sometimes called a rath, is an early medieval enclosed farmstead, typically dated to between the sixth and tenth centuries, built to protect a family, their livestock, and their grain from raiders and rival clans. The Dromkeen example is univallate, meaning it has a single enclosing bank rather than the two or three concentric rings that marked the homes of higher-status families. Its internal diameter runs to roughly 32 metres across both axes, making it a fairly substantial example of its type. The bank is overgrown but remains well defined, and on the western through northern and eastern arc, traces of an exterior fosse, a defensive ditch, can still be made out. That fosse is approximately 2 metres wide and sits about 0.8 metres below the level of the surrounding ground. Inside the northern sector, there are the remains of what appears to be a stone-built house-site, measuring roughly 6.9 metres by 9 metres internally, and a notable quantity of loose stone is scattered across the interior, suggesting further structural remains lying just beneath the surface or tumbled from former walls.