The feature is roughly square, possibly sub-circular, measuring about 14 metres from northwest to southeast and 13.4 metres in the perpendicular direction. What remains of its defining boundary is a stony bank, now largely degraded to little more than a scarp, standing at most 0.45 metres above the surrounding ground and stretching about 1.9 metres in width. At the western and southern corners, stone has gathered in concentrations that may simply reflect centuries of field clearance rather than any original structural intent. At the centre of the interior there is a slight dip, though what caused it, or what it once contained, is not clear.

Earthworks of this kind are not uncommon in the Irish landscape, but that familiarity does not make them easier to read. An enclosure of unknown character and date sits roughly 75 metres to the southwest, which raises the possibility that the two features were once related in some way, though the evidence does not stretch far enough to say how. The Steelaun earthwork is recorded as poorly preserved and difficult to interpret, which is its own kind of honesty. Generations of farming have a way of flattening the past into ambiguity, leaving behind shapes that suggest habitation, or ritual, or boundary-marking, without committing to any of them. What stands here is the residue of something, sitting quietly in ordinary grazing land, its original meaning worn down to a scarp and a scatter of stones.