The enclosure measures roughly 45 metres in diameter, and what defined it originally was a drystone wall, the kind of construction associated with early medieval ringforts or prehistoric enclosures, where a community would have enclosed a settlement or an area of agricultural or ceremonial significance. The difficulty here is that a subsequent field wall has been laid directly on top of the earlier structure along its entire circuit, effectively burying the archaeological feature in plain sight.

This layering of one boundary on top of another is not unusual in the Irish landscape, where land has been worked and divided continuously for centuries, and where later farmers often found that an ancient earthwork provided a convenient ready-made foundation. What it means in practice is that the enclosure at Garrauns is described as very poorly preserved, its original form detectable more by shape and position than by any clearly legible remains. The hillock setting is itself worth noting. Elevated ground, even modestly so, was frequently chosen for enclosures of this type, offering both a degree of natural defence and visibility across the surrounding terrain. The scrubland and reclaimed grass that now surrounds the site gives some sense of how marginal and contested this land has been, cleared and worked and left and worked again across generations.