The site at Finiskil is a ringfort, or the remains of one: a roughly circular enclosure about twenty metres across, defined by a raised earthen bank and a surrounding fosse, the waterlogged ditch that once added both a physical and psychological barrier to the whole arrangement. Ringforts were the most common form of enclosed settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically used as farmsteads by families of some local standing, and thousands of them survive in varying states across the country. This one sits on its drumlin, a low elongated hill formed from glacial debris, angled NNW to SSE, with the interior ground sloping away to the south-east.

The earthwork's dimensions, where they can still be measured, give a reasonable sense of what was once here. At the northern arc, the bank extends about 7.2 metres at its base, narrowing to just 1.2 metres at the top, and stands over two metres high on its exterior face. The fosse outside it is broader still, nearly 7.5 metres wide at the top, though only a metre deep externally. That ditch has been partially filled in along its north-eastern to eastern stretch, and the western side of the bank has sustained some damage over the years. No original entrance is now recognisable, which is not unusual for a site this age and condition; the gap through the bank and across the fosse that would once have admitted a person or a cart has been obscured by centuries of slippage, growth, and casual disturbance. What remains is a quietly legible piece of landscape, the logic of enclosure still visible even when the details have blurred.