No earthwork rises from the grass, no bank or ditch breaks the surface; the site exists, at ground level, as pure absence. The only physical hint that something once stood here is a slight irregularity in the western field boundary, a kink in the line that might, or might not, mark the outer edge of a structure that has since been absorbed entirely into the surrounding pasture.

A rath is an early medieval enclosure, typically circular, formed by one or more earthen banks and ditches and used as a farmstead or high-status residence. The example at Scarteen measured roughly 40 metres in diameter, according to the six-inch Ordnance Survey map of 1894, which recorded it as a circular feature already partially cut through by a north-northwest to south-southeast field boundary running across its western side. That boundary likely did much of the damage, the gradual process of agricultural improvement and field reorganisation being one of the most common reasons Irish ringforts disappear from the landscape. By the time the map was being revised in the late nineteenth century, the enclosure was already truncated; at some point after that, whatever earthwork remained was levelled entirely.