What survived into the late twentieth century was a D-shaped earthwork, roughly 52 metres north to south and 42 metres east to west, defined by a low earthen bank on its eastern and southern sides, a straight field bank to the west, and, to the north-east, something more ghostly still: a trace of a former bank visible only as a difference in vegetation growth, the ground expressing a buried edge that the eye could no longer quite see. There was no fosse, the broad defensive ditch that typically accompanies such enclosures, and no legible entrance. Whatever this place had been, it was not giving much away.

Embanked enclosures of this kind are found widely across Ireland, and their origins and purposes vary considerably. Some are early medieval in character, related to settlement or land management; others may be prehistoric. Without excavation it is rarely possible to say which category any particular example belongs to, and Rathronan offers no obvious clues. What it does offer is a small, precise record of erasure. In 1988, when the site was assessed, the interior had been planted with a root crop. By December 1993, according to a report in the Wexford People, the last remnant of the bank had been removed entirely. The enclosure, which had endured for centuries in some form, was gone within a few years of being formally described.