A roughly circular raised area, around 43 metres in diameter, sits on a low rise in pasture, with a scarp, a slight but legible drop in ground level, still tracing part of its circumference from the south-south-east around through south to north. That curved earthen edge is the remnant of what would once have been a continuous boundary, but the rest has been levelled, the interior flattened, and any trace of a fosse, the external ditch that typically accompanied such enclosures, has vanished entirely.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when defined primarily by earthen banks rather than stone, were the most common form of enclosed settlement in early medieval Ireland, built and occupied roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. They served as farmsteads for individual family groups, the enclosing bank and ditch providing a degree of security for livestock and household alike. Thousands were constructed across the country, and thousands have since been reduced or erased by centuries of agricultural activity. This one in Sleehaun follows that pattern. The original entrance, which would once have been a deliberate and probably reinforced gap in the bank, is no longer identifiable anywhere along the surviving arc.