When the Ordnance Survey mapped this area in 1837, they recorded it not as an ancient monument but as a tree-ring, a decorative circular planting feature of the kind that Georgian and Victorian landowners used to add structure and ornament to demesne landscapes. Whether that label was simply a misreading of something far older, or an accurate description of a relatively modern construction, remains an open question.

The earthwork is roughly circular, measuring approximately 46 metres across on its NW-SE axis and 50 metres NE-SW, enclosed by a wide, low earthen bank with an external fosse, the ditch that typically runs around the outside of a ringfort. A ringfort, broadly speaking, is an enclosed farmstead of early medieval Ireland, usually built between the 5th and 12th centuries, defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches surrounding a domestic interior. The fosse here, however, has notably steep sides, which suggests it was re-dug at some point, most likely when the site was taken in hand as a designed landscape feature associated with Clanhugh Demesne, which lies about 270 metres to the south. The interior, sloping from northeast to southwest, was planted with spruce trees in the 19th century, and a second, similar tree-ring once stood just 140 metres to the south. The combination of these details leaves two plausible readings: an early medieval enclosure that a later landowner quietly pressed into service as a garden feature, redigging the ditch to neaten its outline; or an entirely post-1700 earthwork that was built to look like, or simply function as, a circular tree plantation from the start. A further ringfort sits about 200 metres to the north-northwest, which lends some weight to the idea that the underlying form, at least, may be genuinely early.