No earthwork rises from the ground, no ditch curves across the field, and a visitor standing on the spot would have no way of knowing that anything of significance had ever been there. What survives is the outline on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, where a subcircular enclosure measuring roughly 60 metres northeast to southwest and 50 metres northwest to southeast was recorded before it disappeared beneath the working landscape.

A rath, the most common form of ringfort in Ireland, was typically a circular or roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and ditch, used as a farmstead during the early medieval period, broadly from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Thousands were built across the country, and many have been lost to centuries of ploughing, drainage, and field reorganisation. This one at Isertkelly appears to have suffered exactly that fate. A field boundary running northwest to southeast cut across the northern and eastern sides of the enclosure, and at some point the enclosure itself was levelled entirely. Notably, it sits only about 50 metres to the southeast of a second rath, suggesting that this part of Galway once supported a cluster of early medieval settlement, a pattern found in many parts of Ireland where adjacent ringforts may indicate family groupings or successive occupation over generations.