The site at Rathcosgry sits on a gentle rise in level pastureland, its circular form still just legible at roughly nineteen and a half metres in diameter. A rath, to use the Irish term, was typically a circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, serving as a defended homestead rather than a military fortification. This one has not fared especially well over the centuries.

Recorded by McCaffrey in 1952, the monument was already described as poorly preserved at that point. What remains is a bank of earth and stone tracing the circuit of the original enclosure, though even this has been interrupted by a field wall that cuts straight through the monument at both its north-north-east and south-south-west sides. That kind of intrusion is common on Irish farmland, where later generations of landowners drew boundaries without much concern for whatever lay beneath or in the way. The place name Rathcosgry itself preserves the memory of the site, the Irish word rath appearing in countless townland names across the country wherever such enclosures once stood.