The site occupies the north-eastern summit of the hill, and what was once a substantial earthwork, a roughly circular enclosure of around forty metres internal diameter, has been reduced over the decades to little more than a soilmark visible only from the air. It is, in a sense, a monument that now exists primarily as a photograph.

A ringfort, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, typically dating from the early medieval period in Ireland and associated with farmstead settlement. The Rathmichael example was first formally identified from an aerial photograph taken in 1961 by the Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography, reference CUCAP AOW 77, at which point the western and south-western sections of the bank were still standing above ground. Evidence for the eastern side had already been captured on a different kind of record: the 1937 Ordnance Survey six-inch map shows a curving field boundary that traces the arc of the enclosure. By 1971, a further aerial survey confirmed the site was still legible on the ground. By 1992, however, an OS photograph showed the whole thing had collapsed into cropmark evidence, a circular area of differential soil and vegetation growth that outlines the bank, an external fosse or ditch, and an annexe at the north-west of the enclosure. The record was compiled by archaeologists Geraldine Stout and Padraig Clancy.

Visitors hoping to see anything recognisable on the ground will find themselves frustrated. The site sits within an active golf course, which limits access and means the surface archaeology has long since been disturbed. The most meaningful way to engage with this particular ringfort is through the aerial photographic record rather than a walk across the hillside. The cropmark evidence, visible in dry summers when buried features influence how grass and crops grow above them, remains the clearest impression of what once stood here. Carrickgollogan itself is accessible from the surrounding area, and the broader landscape of south Dublin and the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains makes the location worth understanding in context, even if the monument itself now survives only in archive photographs and soil.