Ringforts of this kind, known in Irish as raths, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a homestead within one or more earthen banks. This one at Liskenna measures roughly 33 metres across, modest by any standard, and the ground inside slopes away to the east, which gives the whole structure a slightly lopsided, slumping quality that rewards a careful look.

The enclosure is defined by an earthen bank that retains a clear profile at the north-northwest, where the base is five metres wide and the external face rises to about one and a half metres. Outside the bank, a fosse, the ditch that would originally have reinforced the defensive or symbolic boundary of the enclosure, survives to the northwest and north, though it has been partially re-cut and pressed into service as a field drain. That practical repurposing is itself a small piece of agricultural history: the fosse was probably modified over centuries as the land around it changed hands and use. Several breaks interrupt the bank. The gap at the south-southeast, accompanied by a causeway, looks like a later interference, but the northeast entrance, now blocked, at just over two metres wide at the base, may be the original way in, the threshold through which the occupants of this place once passed.