The north side of the enclosure rises on an artificially built-up platform, a deliberate correction for the fact that the ground slopes away in that direction. Whoever built this place was not simply throwing up a bank around a flat yard; they were reshaping a hillside to create a level, defensible interior on a north-facing break in the slope, and the result still reads clearly in the landscape today.

A ringfort, sometimes called a rath, is a type of enclosed farmstead typical of early medieval Ireland, generally dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century. Most consist of a circular earthen bank enclosing a domestic area, and this example at Ardaneneen follows that pattern closely. The enclosure measures approximately thirty metres north to south and twenty-eight metres east to west, defined by an earthen bank around 1.4 metres high along most of its circuit, with the internal face of that bank reinforced with stone. On the north side, where the artificial raising of the ground is most pronounced, the scarp drops a considerable 3.4 metres. Two gaps in the boundary, one to the north-east and one to the south-south-west, each around three metres wide, are connected by a trackway that crosses straight through the interior, suggesting the enclosure was folded into the working agricultural landscape long after its original use had ended. A farm laneway still skirts the south-west side. Across the valley to the north, at least two further ringforts are recorded, hinting that this part of mid Cork was once fairly densely settled in the early medieval period.