The enclosure at Gortnaleaha is the kind of site that rewards patience and a good eye; roughly 71 metres in diameter, it reads less as a monument than as a persistent wrinkle in the land, declining to be entirely erased despite centuries of agricultural improvement.

Michael Connolly's 2008 doctoral thesis on the prehistoric settlement of the Lee Valley, completed at University College Cork, examined this enclosure as part of a broader study of how people organised themselves across this corner of Kerry in prehistoric times. The earthwork belongs to a class of monument generally understood as an enclosure, a term covering a wide range of circular or sub-circular banks that may have served residential, agricultural, or ceremonial purposes depending on their date and context. At Gortnaleaha, around 85 per cent of the enclosing bank survives to some degree, though unevenly. To the north and north-west it is best preserved, reaching a width of 3 metres and standing to an external height of 0.7 metres. To the west it has been almost entirely levelled, traceable only as a faint undulation underfoot. There is no evidence of an accompanying ditch, either on the ground or in aerial photography, which is somewhat unusual and complicates any confident dating or classification. Several breaks appear in the surviving bank, though whether any of them mark an original entrance is unclear. Inside, the enclosure is largely featureless, save for a small earthen rise near the south-west, roughly 5.9 metres across and under half a metre high, which may reflect later disturbance rather than any deliberate prehistoric feature.

The site's position on the lower slopes of the Stacks Mountains gives it a wide outlook across the Sliabh Mis range, the Lee Valley, and Tralee Bay to the south and south-west. Whether that prospect was meaningful to whoever built the enclosure, or simply incidental to choosing workable ground, is one of the questions the site does not answer easily.