It exists, for practical purposes, only on paper, recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps as an oval enclosure measuring roughly forty metres along its north-west to south-east axis and thirty metres across. On the ground today, no bank, no ditch, no earthwork of any kind remains visible. The site is, in a quiet sense, a ghost.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths or lios, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a circular or oval area enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches. They served as farmsteads, and many thousands once dotted the Irish landscape. The Shangarry example, had it survived, would have fallen well within the typical size range for such enclosures. That it does not survive above ground is not unusual in itself; centuries of ploughing, drainage, and land improvement have erased enormous numbers of these sites across the country. What makes this particular case worth noting is that its existence rests entirely on cartographic evidence, the diligent work of nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey mapmakers who recorded the outline of the enclosure before whatever remained of it disappeared entirely. Without that record, the rath at Shangarry would be unknown.