The fosse, the defensive ditch that once ran between the site's two concentric earthen banks, has been pressed into service as a lane to the west and south-west, its sides cut back to give vehicles enough room to pass. Rubble fills part of it to the south. The inner bank, still standing to around 1.5 metres on its interior face, is thick with oak trees, bushes, and younger growth. The overall effect is of something half-remembered and half-repurposed.

Ringforts, or raths, are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, built predominantly during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, as enclosed farmsteads for farming families of various social ranks. They typically consist of one or more circular earthen banks and ditches surrounding a central living area. The Kilpadder example is bivallate, meaning it has two such concentric banks with an intervening fosse, suggesting the family or community that built it had the resources or the need for additional defence. Its diameter of around 45 metres puts it within the middle range for such sites. It appears on Ordnance Survey maps from 1842, 1904, and 1938, each time depicted in its characteristic hachured form, so its outline was already well established in the cartographic record long before the farmyard encroached. In the south-east quadrant of the surviving interior there is a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage of the kind often associated with ringforts, likely used for storage or as a place of refuge. The southern half of the interior slopes gently northward and is now heavily overgrown with weeds and briars, separated from the farmyard by a rough mound of rubble that marks where the two worlds meet.