The site is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of roughly circular enclosure defined by earthen banks that served as a farmstead or settlement for a single family during the early medieval period, broadly from around the fifth to the twelfth century. Thousands of these survive across Ireland in varying states of preservation, but each one carries its own particular story of use, adaptation, and slow erasure.

This example at Sroughmore occupies a very gentle east and north-facing slope, its circular form approximately thirty metres in diameter. The defining bank is composed of earth and stone, varying considerably in width, from around 2.3 metres at the south to as much as 4.5 metres along the northeast to east arc, and standing between half a metre and just over a metre in height. Unlike many ringforts, there is no fosse, the term for the external ditch that typically accompanies such banks, suggesting either that one was never dug here or that it has been completely infilled over time. At the western side, the original bank has merged with a later field boundary, a common fate for ancient earthworks absorbed into working agricultural landscapes. Damage is visible elsewhere: the upper portion of the bank has been cut away at the east, and a stretch of roughly ten metres at the southwest has been demolished entirely. A gap of about 1.2 metres at the northwest may mark a modern interference rather than an original entrance. Inside the enclosure, the ground is level and marked by lazy beds, the narrow parallel ridges left by the spade-cultivation method widely used during and after the eighteenth century, suggesting the interior was turned over to tillage at some point long after the rath's original occupation had ended.