A roughly circular earthwork, measuring about 34 metres east to west and 30 metres north to south, sits enclosed by a scarp that still rises to around 1.4 metres in places. Its interior has been deliberately raised on the northeast side to level out the natural fall of the hillslope, a detail that speaks to considerable effort and intention. A gap just under three metres wide opens to the southeast, the kind of formal entrance arrangement that distinguishes a constructed enclosure from a natural feature. To its north and northeast, a semicircular extension defined partly by a natural rock outcrop and some stone facing adds a further, slightly irregular annex to the whole.

Locally, the site has long been known as a lios or lisheen, terms used in Irish for a ringfort, the type of enclosed farmstead that was the dominant settlement form in early medieval Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Ringforts, which could be defined by earthen banks, stone walls, or scarped ground depending on local materials and terrain, were typically the homesteads of farming families, sometimes with enclosures for livestock. The local name was noted by Hartnett as far back as 1939, suggesting the community's memory of the place as something ancient and set apart had persisted long before any formal archaeological attention. Later stone field boundaries have been built across and on top of the earlier earthwork, a common fate for such sites, as successive generations of farmers incorporated prehistoric and early medieval remains into their working landscape without necessarily erasing them entirely.