What looks at first like an ordinary earthen fence separating two townlands turns out to be something considerably older, its curve betraying an origin that has nothing to do with modern agricultural tidiness. The bank that runs along the boundary between Lissanode and Bryanbeg Lower appears to be a surviving fragment of a ringfort, the enclosing element of a type of circular earthwork that was built in enormous numbers across Ireland during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Ringforts, sometimes called raths when constructed from earth rather than stone, served as enclosed farmsteads, protecting people, livestock, and goods. Most have been partially or entirely erased by centuries of ploughing and development, which makes the Lissanode example quietly interesting: the enclosure survived, at least in part, because it was absorbed into a boundary that farmers had good reason to maintain.

The monument was first formally described in 1983. At that point, the curving earthen bank could be read clearly from the west, north, and north-east, while fainter traces of a levelled scarp, the inner or outer slope of the original enclosure wall, were still detectable from the east, south-east, and south. A possible external fosse, meaning a ditch dug around the outside of the enclosing bank as an additional defensive or boundary feature, was also noted as partly visible. The full outline of the structure only becomes apparent when aerial photography is brought in; on Digital Globe imagery, the faintest suggestion of a levelled bank elsewhere on the site can be picked out, filling in the circuit that ground-level inspection alone cannot reveal. The monument sits on slightly sloping pasture land, which is itself typical of ringfort placement across the Irish midlands, where a gentle rise gave a degree of visibility without requiring the effort of a hilltop site.