Most ringforts sit proud of the surrounding landscape, their earthen banks rising above a roughly level interior. Here, in a pastoral field in north Kerry, the ground inside the enclosure lies so far below the surrounding terrain that the bank, though only 3.2 metres above the outer ground level, towers 6 to 8 metres above the interior. Standing inside, you would be looking up at walls of earth rather than out across the countryside.

The Irish name, Lios na Cúirte, translates as "fort of the court", a designation that suggests some remembered significance in local memory. The site is a univallate rath, meaning it has a single enclosing earthen bank rather than the multiple concentric rings found at more elaborate examples, though its internal diameter of roughly 53 metres makes it a substantial enclosure. A rath of this kind would typically have served as a farmstead during the early medieval period, home to a family of some local standing. Three small mounds survive within the interior, positioned in the north-east, south-east, and western sectors. Beneath them, according to local tradition, lie souterrains, underground passages of dry-stone construction commonly found in association with Irish ringforts and used variously for storage, refuge, or concealment. The mounds may mark points where those passages were entered or where they have since collapsed. The passages themselves, the tradition holds, have been closed up, their contents and extent unknown.