What makes it worth pausing over is its persistence: the site was recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1837 with the simple designation "Fort", placing it within the broad class of ringforts, the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland typically defined by earthen banks and ditches. Thousands of these survive across the island in varying states, and this one at Lislea sits towards the more eroded end of that spectrum.

The enclosure measures roughly 39 metres in diameter, which falls within the normal range for a ringfort of agricultural use rather than high-status occupation. Around the northern arc, from north-north-west through to east-south-east, a low bank of earth and stone still traces the circuit, though it has been considerably reduced over time, standing no more than 0.2 metres high and about 3.2 metres wide. Elsewhere, the boundary survives only as a scarp, a slight but readable change in ground level, between 0.3 and 0.5 metres. A shallow external fosse, the ditch that would originally have reinforced the defensive or symbolic boundary of the enclosure, was noted in a 1976 report but has since been infilled, leaving no visible trace. A gap of about two metres in the eastern bank may represent the original entrance, the point through which people and livestock would have passed in and out of the enclosed space.