The Ordnance Survey's 25-inch map recorded an enclosure at Gaulstown as neatly circular, roughly 36 metres across, sitting on a bluff above a small valley in the gently rolling grassland of County Kilkenny. Satellite imagery tells a different story. What survives of the earthen banks suggests the enclosure was more rectilinear than any circle, and a good portion of it no longer survives at all.

Enclosures of this kind, defined by a raised bank of earth or stone enclosing a roughly circular or oval interior, are among the most common archaeological monuments in the Irish landscape, with origins that can stretch back through the early medieval period and beyond. They served many purposes, from settlement and farming to ritual use, and their exact date and function often remain uncertain without excavation. At Gaulstown, quarrying has done considerable damage. The south-western quadrant of the interior has been largely removed, and what remains of the enclosing bank survives only in two sections: a stretch running east to west in the northern sector, about 26 metres long and a metre high, and a shorter remnant to the west, standing closer to 1.8 metres. The rest of the monument appears to be largely intact beneath scrub growth, though that very scrub makes proper assessment difficult from ground level.

The site occupies a commanding position with views in all directions, which may or may not have been a factor in its original siting. Whether that placement was strategic, practical, or incidental is one of the questions the damaged and overgrown monument cannot currently answer.