From the outside, on the uphill side, the enclosing bank barely registers above the surrounding pasture, rising only about ten centimetres above the slope. Step inside, however, and the same bank towers to over three metres. The whole structure is a product of careful calculation rather than brute accumulation.

The enclosure is subrectangular in plan, stretching roughly 68 metres east to west and 36 metres north to south, with the east and west sides carrying a slight curve while the north and south run straight. It sits on a south-facing slope in County Cork, and its builders had to contend with the natural fall of the ground. On the north side the bank is cut into the hillside; on the south it is built up to compensate, creating a level working interior from terrain that would otherwise tilt away underfoot. Around the outside runs a fosse, a defensive or demarcating ditch, dropping to around 2.4 metres deep, which accounts for much of that dramatic internal height. Entry was through a causewayed gap to the south-south-west, a break in the bank and ditch about four metres wide where the ditch was left uncut to allow passage. Enclosures of this kind, defined by a bank and external ditch, are a familiar feature of the Irish countryside across many periods, used variously for settlement, agriculture, or the enclosure of livestock, though pinning down the precise function and date of any individual example without excavation is rarely straightforward.

The site sits in pasture, and the subtlety of its external profile on the uphill approach means it can read as unremarkable ground until you are practically on top of it. The real moment of understanding comes when you cross the threshold and the internal scale of the bank becomes apparent.