What is unusual here is the degree to which the monument has been pulled in two directions at once: partially preserved, partially absorbed into the working landscape around it. The outer bank has been folded into a field boundary along its south-south-east to south-west arc, while the inner bank has been pushed back into the interior along the south-east to south-west section, squeezing the enclosed space to roughly 19.6 metres north to south. The whole thing sits on a north-east-facing slope, the interior tilting gently downhill and currently masked by dense overgrowth.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when constructed from earthworks rather than stone, were the most common form of enclosed settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the sixth to the twelfth centuries. They served as farmsteads, their banks and ditches, called fosses, providing a degree of security for people and livestock rather than any serious military defence. The Rathnagore example is a bivallate type, meaning it has two concentric banks with a single fosse between them, that fosse measuring 2.1 metres wide for much of its circuit. The inner bank is the more substantial of the two, standing up to 2.7 metres on its outer face where best preserved on the west to north arc, though it has been worn to little more than a scarped edge on the north-east and east-south-east sides. The outer bank is considerably slighter, reaching only 0.8 metres on its exterior face. Breaks in the outer bank at north-north-east and east-south-east, each matched by a corresponding lowering of the inner bank, likely mark original entrance points. The site was recorded and compiled by Denis Power, with details uploaded to the national record in August 2011.

The rath sits in farmland, so access would require landowner permission. The interior overgrowth noted at the time of survey means the earthworks are best read from the outside, walking the perimeter to trace where the banks survive at something close to their original profile, particularly on the western and northern sides, and where agricultural use has softened or redirected them. The widening of the fosse along the southern arc, where it opens to 5.5 metres, is one of the more legible signs of how the monument has shifted over time, the ground itself recording a long history of gradual modification.