It has a proper bank of earth and stone, an outer fosse (a shallow defensive ditch), and dimensions of roughly 45 to 47 metres across, placing it comfortably in the range of an early medieval ringfort. But something does not quite add up. The banks are unusually well preserved. The interior is waterlogged and marshy rather than the settled, level ground you would expect if people had once lived inside. And the hilltop position, while dramatic, is more suited to spectacle than to the practical needs of an early farming enclosure. The conclusion drawn by those who have examined it is that this is not ancient at all, but a designed landscape feature, built to look deliberately ornamental.

The 1840 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, one of the most useful documents for reading the Irish countryside, settles the question fairly decisively. It shows the circular enclosure not as an old fort but as a grove of trees, laid out in a ring at the end of a longer plantation associated with nearby Lackenacoombe House. Tree-rings of this kind were a recognised feature of eighteenth and nineteenth century estate landscaping in Ireland and Britain, often placed on prominent rises where they would be visible from the house and its grounds, giving the impression of a carefully composed view. The field boundaries shown on the same map radiate outward from the bank at the north-west, north-east, and south-east, suggesting the enclosure was a deliberate focal point around which the working landscape was arranged. The trees themselves are now gone, leaving only the earthwork they once framed.