What was once a substantial enclosed settlement is now, in satellite imagery from 2011, little more than a faint cropmark, the kind of ghostly outline that only dry summers and the right angle of light reliably produce. The land has moved on; the archaeology has not entirely disappeared.

When a survey was carried out in 1976, the monument was still upstanding and measurable. It took the form of a sub-circular raised area, roughly 32 metres across on its north-west to south-east axis and 34 metres on the north-east to south-west, enclosed by two earthen banks with a shallow fosse, or ditch, running between them. A ringfort of this type, sometimes called a rath, was the standard farmstead enclosure of early medieval Ireland, typically the home of a single family and their livestock, defended more by social convention and the effort required to breach the banks than by any serious military fortification. At Rickardstown, the inner bank has been poorly preserved, while the outer remained more substantial, at least until quarrying removed both banks on the south-eastern side. Within the enclosure, a grass-covered outline of a rectangular house site is still discernible at the centre, a trace of the domestic interior that once gave the whole structure its purpose. The site sits on a ridge with open views from the south-east around to the west, a position that would have served any early medieval farmer well, offering both visibility across the surrounding landscape and a naturally elevated platform for building.