Thousands of these circular earthworks survive across the country, but this one at Mornane is unusual in ways that are easy to walk past without noticing. Part of its enclosing bank has been absorbed into the surrounding field system, its outline blurred by centuries of agricultural use, and one entire arc of the circuit has essentially vanished, swallowed by the uneven limestone bedrock that breaks through the ground to the north-west.

The site was recorded as a clearly legible embanked circular enclosure on the Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1841, which tells us that at least some definition existed into the nineteenth century. Since then it has been partially levelled. What survives today was surveyed and compiled by Denis Power, with notes uploaded in August 2011. The earthwork encloses a roughly circular area measuring around 30.5 metres east to west, which is a fairly typical size for a rath, the Irish term for this class of monument. On the south-west to south side, an earth-and-stone bank still stands to around 0.7 metres in height and has been incorporated into the working field boundaries of the surrounding pasture. Moving north-westward, the enclosure is marked only by a faint scarped edge, a low cut in the ground surface, roughly 3.7 metres wide but just 0.4 metres high, barely noticeable unless the light is low and raking across the ground.

The site sits in gently undulating pasture in an area where limestone outcrops frequently through the surface, and this geology has shaped what survives. The north to north-east arc of the enclosure has left no trace at all, the ground there being too disrupted by rock to have retained any earthwork. Visitors exploring the area should look for the field boundaries on the south-eastern side first, as that is where the bank is most legible. Early morning or late afternoon in winter, when low sunlight picks out subtle changes in ground level, offers the best chance of reading the site in the landscape. The outcrops of pale limestone breaking through the pasture give the whole area a bleached, open quality that contrasts with the soft green turf filling what would once have been a sheltered domestic enclosure.