This is a rath, sometimes also called a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built predominantly during the early medieval period in Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. The circular or oval bank and surrounding ditch were less about military defence and more about marking out domestic space, protecting livestock, and signalling the social status of the family within.

The Lisdavilla rath measures approximately 66 metres east to west and 46 metres north to south, making it a fairly substantial example of the type. It is defined by a degraded earthen bank and an external fosse, which is the technical term for a ditch dug to reinforce the bank beside it. The fosse survives in two arcing sections, running from the west-northwest around to the north-northwest, and again from the east-northeast around to the south, though gaps elsewhere in the bank appear to be of modern rather than ancient origin. Scattered along the course of the monument are a number of disused quarry pits, suggesting the site was at some point exploited for stone or material, and a field boundary curves around the monument from the northeast to the southeast, the working agricultural landscape having long since arranged itself around this older presence in the ground.