For years it was catalogued simply as an "enclosure", a catch-all term that tends to be applied when surveyors are cautious about committing to a more specific reading. The structure is almost certainly a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was the standard form of rural settlement in Ireland roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. These were typically the enclosed farmsteads of farming families, the circular bank marking the boundary of a domestic world rather than a military one.

What survives at Tromra is modest but legible. The interior measures around twenty metres in diameter, a grass-covered and somewhat poached area, meaning the ground has been churned by livestock over time. Surrounding it is a scrub-covered earthen bank varying between four and six metres in width, with an internal height of under a metre and an external face rising to just over a metre at its tallest. There is no visible fosse, the ditch that typically runs outside such a bank, which may mean it was never dug here, or simply that it has silted and grassed over to the point of invisibility. The outer face of the bank has been cut away on the southern side, suggesting some interference at an unknown point, possibly agricultural clearance. Three gaps are visible in the bank, at the south, south-south-east, and north-west, though none can be confidently identified as the original entrance.