There is nothing to see at ground level, no raised earthwork, no hollow, no obvious break in the grass. The site exists, for practical purposes, only on paper and in whatever archaeological potential the soil quietly holds.

What little is documented about it comes from a single cartographic appearance. Of all the editions of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map produced for this part of Offaly, only the 1910 edition shows any trace of the feature, and even then only partially, recording the south-eastern section of what appears to have been a ditched enclosure. Ditched enclosures of this kind are among the more common but least understood categories of early settlement in Ireland; a circular or roughly circular boundary defined by a cut ditch rather than a built wall, they were used across many centuries and for many purposes, from domestic farmsteads to ceremonial or pastoral use. Without excavation it is rarely possible to say more than that. The Derrymore example has not, as far as the available record suggests, been investigated further, and its age and original function remain unknown.