The bank that rings it still stands to a height of around 2.25 metres, and the silted-up fosse, the defensive ditch that once ran outside the bank, remains faintly legible on the south-western side. It is a modest thing to look at, yet it represents a form of settlement that was once extraordinarily common across Ireland.

This site is a rath, the most frequently encountered type of ringfort in the Irish landscape. Raths were typically built during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and served as enclosed farmsteads for a single family or small community. The earthen bank, thrown up from the material dug out of the surrounding fosse, defined a boundary that was part practical, part social, part symbolic. The Lisnabanree example measures approximately 34 metres across on a north-north-east to south-south-west axis, a fairly typical size for a single-family enclosure of this kind. Thousands of such sites were ploughed out or built over across the country in the centuries that followed their use, making those that survive in reasonable condition worth noting. Here, both the bank and the ghost of the fosse have come through largely intact.