The interior diameter measures 38.5 metres, which puts it comfortably in the range of the larger ringforts, or raths, the enclosed farmsteads that were the dominant form of rural settlement across Ireland during the early medieval period, roughly from the fifth to the twelfth century. Thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation, but this one at Boagh retains both its bank and a fosse described as wide and deep, suggesting the enclosure is substantially intact.

A report compiled by the Office of Public Works in 1969 noted that the original entrance to the enclosure may have been positioned at the south-east, which was a common orientation for ringforts, possibly for practical reasons related to prevailing wind or simply to face the morning light. That entrance, if it was ever clearly defined, is no longer obvious, but the 1969 observation at least points to the site having been examined and recorded before it entered the published archaeological inventory for County Cavan in 1995. The earthen bank that survives today would once have supported a timber palisade or a dense hedge of thorny growth, making the interior a defensible space for a farming household and their livestock.