The site is subcircular in plan, measuring roughly 29 metres north to south and 24.5 metres east to west, and what gives it a particular quality is the survival of its stone-lined entrance gap at the southern side, just under two metres wide. In a country where thousands of such enclosures have been levelled by ploughing or erased by development, a well-preserved entrance passage is genuinely uncommon.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when they are earthen in construction, were the typical farmstead enclosures of early medieval Ireland, used roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. They functioned as protected homesteads, their banks and ditches, or fosses, as much a statement of status as a practical defence. This example at Shrulegrove follows that pattern closely: two concentric banks with a fosse, the ditch between them, cut into the rise. The outer bank has not survived in full and can only be traced from the south around to the west-northwest, but the inner enclosure remains in fair condition. The slight elevation would have made the site visible across the surrounding low ground, which was presumably the intention of whoever chose to build here.