The ringfort at Brackloon in County Galway has long been known in the area as Flattery's Fort, a name recorded as far back as 1914 by a researcher named Neary, and the kind of designation that hints at some half-forgotten association with a family or a landholding, now otherwise lost. It sits on a modest rise above low-lying grassland, with bogland stretching away to the north, east, and south-west, which would have made the elevated ground genuinely useful to whoever chose the spot.

The monument itself is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, typically a circular or near-circular enclosure defined by earthen banks, used during the early medieval period as a farmstead and enclosure for livestock. This one is subcircular rather than perfectly round, measuring roughly 36 metres north to south and 30.5 metres east to west. Two banks survive in fairly good condition, separated by a fosse, the ditch dug between them to heighten the defensive effect. The outer bank is visible along the western and northern arcs, and again from the south-east around to the south, though that southern stretch has been partly absorbed by a later field bank, one of the small erasures that centuries of farming work on older earthworks. A trackway cuts across the monument at the north-north-west and south-south-east, which may point to long-continued use of the ground across different periods. Adjoining the main enclosure at the south-west is a second subcircular earthwork of similar dimensions, defined by its own earthen bank. Whether the two were constructed together or simply accumulated in proximity over time is not established, though their closeness makes some kind of association plausible.