A subrectangular enclosure, roughly 50 metres along its longer axis, survives only as a soil mark, its bank and fosse, the raised earthen boundary and accompanying ditch that once gave the site its form, long since levelled by centuries of ploughing. It was a satellite image, taken in February 2009, that made the feature legible again, the differential growth of grass betraying the buried edges of something that once enclosed a defined and deliberate space.

The enclosure measures approximately 50 metres northwest to southeast and 45 metres northeast to southwest, dimensions consistent with the kind of early medieval enclosed settlement found across Ireland. Its northeastern edge has fared slightly better than the rest; the field boundary at that corner still follows the arc of the original structure, a quiet persistence in the modern landscape. A ringfort, a circular earthwork enclosure of the same broad period, sits about 220 metres to the northwest, suggesting that this part of Shandangan was once a more densely occupied stretch of ground than its present emptiness implies. Neither site appears on the Ordnance Survey mapping, which means both have existed outside the standard record of the landscape until relatively recent scrutiny brought them to light.