The enclosure measures roughly 70 metres east to west and 50 metres north to south, defined by an earthen bank with an external fosse, a shallow defensive ditch, running around it. The southern side is stone-faced and rises a little higher than the rest, suggesting it received particular attention at some point, though whether for defence, drainage, or simple repair is not clear. Four breaks in the bank, at roughly the northwest, east, southeast, and west, hint at original entrances or later gaps opened for agricultural convenience.

The site has had something of an identity problem. When the first Ordnance Survey mapped it in 1842, it appeared as a roughly rectangular enclosure, and that depiction was enough for T. B. Barry, writing in 1981, to include it in his catalogue of moated sites for County Cork. A moated site typically refers to a medieval platform, usually associated with a manor house or high-status farmstead, surrounded by a water-filled or wet ditch. The oval shape on the ground, however, sits uneasily with that classification, and the earthwork may belong to an entirely different tradition. What makes the setting more intriguing is its company: the Claidh Dubh, a substantial linear earthwork of debated prehistoric or early medieval date, runs approximately 90 metres to the north-northwest, and what may be an early ecclesiastical enclosure lies around 250 metres to the southeast. Whether these features are related in any meaningful way remains an open question. A limestone quarry and a spread of field clearance stones in the area of the fosse to the southeast add further texture to a landscape that has clearly been worked and reworked over a very long period.