Aerial photography reveals its outline clearly, a roughly circular form measuring approximately 51 metres north to south and 48 metres east to west. On the ground, a modern field boundary cuts across its western perimeter, the kind of routine agricultural division that quietly erases the edges of older landscapes without anyone necessarily noticing.

Enclosures of this type are a recurring feature of the Irish countryside, and while the term can cover a range of functions, a site of this diameter, in this kind of setting, invites comparison with the enclosed farmsteads and settlement sites of the early medieval period. What makes the Gillardstown example worth attention is its proximity to a ringfort, a roughly circular earthwork enclosure of a kind commonly associated with early medieval farming families, which sits around 100 metres to the west. The two features together suggest this corner of Westmeath was once a more actively organised landscape than the flat reclaimed grassland now implies. The reclamation itself is significant; drainage and improvement works have altered the ground conditions across much of the Irish midlands, and sites like this one survive more as impressions in the soil than as visible earthworks.