There is no dramatic earthwork, no imposing bank circling a hilltop. What remains is a barely perceptible swelling in the pasture, a low curving rise to the north and a slight corresponding rise to the south, sketching out a roughly circular area of around 34.5 metres north to south and 36 metres east to west. A faint trace of a fosse, the defensive ditch that would once have ringed the enclosure, is still just detectable along the northern and north-eastern arc. Everything else has been levelled.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when formed from earthen banks rather than stone, were the dominant form of enclosed farmstead in early medieval Ireland, built and occupied roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation, but many have been ploughed out over the centuries, leaving only the ghostly outlines that aerial photography or close observation on foot can sometimes recover. At Killowny, the levelling appears to have happened exactly that way. The landowner reported that large stones were uncovered when the site was ploughed, suggesting the rath once had a more substantial internal or structural presence than the current surface gives away. Those stones, turned up by the plough and presumably cleared away, were likely the last visible traces of whatever was built within the enclosure.