A ringfort, or rath, is an enclosed circular settlement of the early medieval period, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches. At Kilbarry, those banks have been so thoroughly levelled that the site is now readable only as a faint rise in level pasture, with a shallow depression just visible to the east where the outer ditch once ran.

The 1842 Ordnance Survey six-inch map shows the enclosure clearly, marked as a hachured circle of roughly 70 metres in diameter, with a field boundary already skirting its north-northeastern to south-southeastern edge. By 1934, when Bowman recorded the site, the earthworks had been largely reduced, though the inner circuit still measured approximately 75 yards across. At that point, 96 yards of the outer rampart remained standing, absorbed into the boundary fence dividing two fields on land belonging to a Mr Dennehy. That repurposing of ancient earthwork as modern field division is a quietly common fate for Irish ringforts, and it is part of why the outer bank survived at all where so much else was lost.

The field boundary Bowman noted is still present to the east of the site, and it is along that line that the site makes most sense to read. The low rise enclosing the circular area is most noticeable on the eastern side, where the ground drops slightly away beyond what was once the outer bank. To the untrained eye it looks like ordinary undulation in a pasture field; to anyone who knows what they are looking at, the circularity is unmistakable.