Known locally as Lisroe or An Lios Rua, the site is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead or settlement that was commonplace in early medieval Ireland. What makes this particular example quietly compelling is not what has survived intact, but the layers of alteration that have accumulated over time, each partially obscuring or overwriting what came before.

The enclosure has an internal diameter of around 28.5 metres and commands a wide view towards Brandon mountain and Brandon Bay. When it was first formally recorded in the early nineteenth century, it was described as being composed chiefly of earth, yet the bank visible today is faced with drystone masonry and closely resembles the field boundaries surrounding it, suggesting it is largely a later rebuilding. Beneath and behind this more recent construction, an earlier bank is still detectable, particularly in the north-north-east sector, where it protrudes inward from the later wall at a height of around half a metre. The western and northern portions of the enclosure are defined not by a bank at all, but by a scarp, a stepped drop in the ground surface, also faced with drystone walling on its outer side. Two gaps exist in the perimeter, one about three metres wide at the east-north-east, partly blocked by yet another stretch of later walling, and a narrower one at the south-west lined with drystone on both sides. Neither can be confidently identified as the original entrance. Inside, the northern half of the enclosure carries the faint parallel ridges of old cultivation beds, and a few disconnected stretches of walling near the centre resist any clear interpretation.

The site sits on a slope, which means the platform of the enclosure is raised above the surrounding fields on its downhill side while sitting below field level on the uphill side, giving it an uneven relationship with the ground around it depending on which direction you approach from. The overlapping phases of construction, the ambiguous gaps, the ghost of an earlier bank peering out from beneath a later one, make this a place that rewards slow attention more than a quick glance from the road.