The enclosure measures 28 metres across in both directions, a near-perfect circle defined by an earthen bank that still rises to an internal height of 1.6 metres. A fosse, the shallow external ditch that would have reinforced the bank's defensive or social function, survives along the south-east to south-west arc, dropping to a depth of around 0.9 metres. The entrance, three metres wide, faces north.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when earthen rather than stone-built, are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, with tens of thousands recorded across the island. Most date to the early medieval period, roughly the sixth to tenth centuries, and are thought to represent the enclosed farmsteads of a farming society that organised itself around kinship and cattle. This particular example at Kippagh fits that pattern. The interior slopes gently downward toward the north, and the site is now overgrown with briars and tree stumps, giving it the slightly unkempt look common to ringforts that have escaped modern disturbance by virtue of lying awkwardly in a field corner. A field boundary curves around the eastern, southern, and south-western edges of the enclosure, suggesting that later land division respected, or at least worked around, the older earthwork. Across the valley to the west, on the opposite bank of the Owennagloor, a second ringfort is visible from the site, a reminder that these enclosures often clustered in areas of good agricultural land, their occupants sharing and perhaps competing over the same river valley.