The site sits on level pasture in Fanningstown, in the barony of Coshma, with open views spreading in all directions, the kind of low, undemonstrative landscape where early medieval enclosures tend to vanish without much fuss. A ringfort, sometimes called a rath, was a roughly circular earthen enclosure used during the early medieval period, most likely as a defended farmstead or the residence of a local family of some standing. This one has been losing ground for a long time, but it has not entirely gone.

The site does not appear at all on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1840, which suggests it was already heavily degraded by then, or simply overlooked. It shows up for the first time on the 25-inch edition of 1897, recorded as a circular embanked enclosure with an external diameter of 45 metres, ringed by a wide fosse, which is the formal term for the ditch that would originally have run around the outside of the bank. By the time the Archaeological Survey of Ireland visited in 2000, the monument was described as largely levelled, with the interior reduced to a slightly raised circular area measuring roughly 22 metres across, defined by a scarped edge rather than any upstanding bank. The fosse itself had been reduced to a shallow slope, surviving only on the southern and north-western sides, while a later field boundary had cut across and truncated the eastern side entirely. The remains recorded at that point were modest: a width of 3.4 metres and a depth of just 0.2 metres where the former ditch once ran. Nearby, within a few hundred metres, sit two related features: another enclosure approximately 200 metres to the west-northwest, and Fanningstown Castle roughly 300 metres to the southwest, suggesting this corner of the barony held genuine importance across several periods.

For anyone willing to seek it out, the site is visible on Google Earth orthophotography captured in June 2018 and February 2020, where the circular outline reads more clearly from above than it does at ground level. On the ground, the experience is subtler; what you are looking for is a gentle rise and an almost imperceptible slope where the old fosse once cut into the earth. The surrounding pasture is level enough that even these minor undulations register if you are paying attention. The sketch plan produced by the Archaeological Survey of Ireland remains the most useful guide to interpreting what survives.