The 1834 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map marks it in gothic lettering as a "fort", a label that carried specific meaning to nineteenth-century surveyors, who used it loosely for circular earthworks of presumed early medieval or prehistoric origin. Subsequent editions of the map let it disappear entirely, and the site has existed largely outside the written record ever since.

What survives on the ground is a grass-covered area roughly 31 metres across from east to west and 27.5 metres north to south, sitting at the top of a small ridge that runs north to south through the townland of Drumaliss. A fosse, which is a defensive ditch, can be traced along the north-western to south-eastern arc of the enclosure, visible now only as a vegetation mark about three metres wide, where the grass grows differently over the disturbed soil beneath. A curved field bank accounts for the remainder of the circuit. No entrance has been identified at any point along the perimeter, which is itself a quietly strange detail; most enclosures of this type preserve at least a gap or a causeway where people and animals passed through. Whether that entrance was never there, or has simply been lost to centuries of agricultural reworking, is an open question. The site's exterior diameter was recorded at approximately 40 metres, placing it within the general range of the ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead common across Ireland from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century, though nothing about Drumaliss confirms that date or function with any certainty.