It measures roughly 48 metres from north to south and 39 metres from east to west, enclosed by an earthen bank that now rises only about 0.6 metres above the surrounding ground. Trees have colonised the interior, and stone robbed from later field fences has been dumped across the site, layering one era of land use on top of another in the way that Irish fields so often do.

This is a rath, the most common type of early medieval settlement monument in Ireland. A rath was essentially a farmstead enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches, home to a single family or small household, typically dating from roughly the sixth to the twelfth century. Tens of thousands were built across the country, yet a great many have been ploughed away, built over, or gradually dismantled for their stone. The example at Kilvindoney survives in reasonable outline, though the gap in its south-western arc suggests some deliberate or accidental breach over the centuries, and the accumulation of field-fence stone across its surface speaks to generations of agricultural tidying that cared little for what lay beneath. A 1994 archaeological survey of the Ballinrobe district, which covers the area around Lough Mask and Lough Carra, recorded the site and noted its condition at that time.