The site is recorded as Lisheendonnell, from the Irish Lisín Dónaill, meaning the little ringfort of Dónall, a personal name attached to this particular enclosure at some point far enough back that no further trace of its owner survives. That combination of precise physical survival and biographical anonymity gives the place a quietly unsettling quality.

The ringfort, or rath, is a univallate example, meaning it is enclosed by a single earthen bank rather than the multiple concentric rings found at more elaborate sites. Ringforts of this type were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically serving as farmsteads for a single family and their livestock. This one is sub-circular in plan, measuring roughly 28 metres north to south and 24 metres east to west. The enclosing bank is 5 metres wide and still rises to 1.8 metres above the external fosse, the U-shaped ditch that runs around the outside of the bank, and to about 1 metre above the interior. The fosse itself is between 1 and 1.6 metres wide and around 0.6 metres deep, and can be traced around most of the circuit. The north-west to west section is the exception, where a modern field drain has cut through both the bank and the fosse, disrupting the one part of the earthwork that time and agriculture had otherwise left largely intact. The site was recorded in detail as part of the North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995 by Catherine Toal.