This is a rath, the most common type of ringfort found across Ireland, typically constructed as a circular or oval enclosure defined by an earthen bank and a surrounding ditch, and used as a defended farmstead by a farming family of some local standing during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Most of Ireland's estimated forty to fifty thousand ringforts have been reduced over the centuries by agriculture and development, and this example in Kilkilvery sits at the more eroded end of that spectrum.

The enclosure is oval in plan, measuring approximately 36 metres on its north-south axis and around 25 metres east to west. What little survives is defined by a low bank with an external fosse, which is simply a ditch running around the outside of the bank, visible at the south-south-east. Elsewhere the boundary of the original enclosure can be traced only as a scarp, a gentle slope or drop in the ground surface where the bank material has long since spread and settled into the surrounding grassland. It is a modest footprint, and the shallow relief of the site reflects both its low-lying position and the cumulative effect of centuries of grazing and cultivation working quietly against it.