The interior of the fort has been almost entirely swallowed by the sea, leaving behind only a curved earthen bank and the ditch that once reinforced it. It is an archaeology of subtraction, where the absence tells as much as what survives.

Promontory forts, sometimes called cliff castles, are a class of prehistoric or early medieval enclosure in which a narrow neck of coastal land is cut off by one or more banks and ditches, allowing the sea to do the defensive work on the remaining sides. At Ardaturrish More, that defensive earthwork survives to a height of 2.7 metres, with an external fosse, the ditch dug in front of a bank to slow or stop an approach, measuring 1.4 metres deep. The bank is curved rather than straight, following the contour of the promontory, and is now heavily overgrown. It is a modest remnant, but the scale of what erosion has taken is the real measure of the site. Whatever settlement, storage, or refuge activity once filled the enclosed interior has long since gone over the cliff edge and into Bantry Bay.