Roughly circular, with a diameter of 35 metres, it is defined by an earthen bank whose inner face rises about 0.7 metres and whose outer face stands slightly higher at 0.8 metres, with a width of nearly six metres. Around much of its circuit runs an external fosse, a shallow surrounding ditch, surviving to a width of around 4 metres and a depth of 0.45 metres on the north-western to north-eastern arc, with further traces continuing around most of the remainder. The combination of bank and fosse is the hallmark of a ringfort, the most common type of early medieval enclosure in Ireland, typically used as a defended farmstead between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries.

What complicates a neat identification is the evidence of stone incorporated into the bank at the eastern side and along the south-western arc. This could indicate a more elaborate original construction, or it may simply reflect later field clearance, with farmers depositing gathered stone against the existing earthwork over the centuries. The distinction matters because it affects whether this was ever a cashel, the term used for a ringfort whose enclosing wall is built primarily of stone rather than earth. Without excavation, the question stays open. The site sits in pasture on the lower foothills of Slievenamon, the isolated mountain in south Tipperary whose name is usually translated from the Irish as the mountain of the women of Fionn, a peak with deep associations in early Irish mythology. The enclosure faces that mountain directly, and on a clear day the view westward across the slope would have been unobstructed from inside the bank.