What makes it unusual is its scale: at roughly fourteen metres in diameter, it is notably smaller than most enclosures of its type, and when a field survey was carried out in 1970, the monument was described specifically as an unusually small, irregular-shaped area. Size alone is enough to make a casual observer wonder what purpose such a compact enclosure could have served.

The earthwork is defined by a bank of earth and stone, once high and steep, though by 1970 it had been reduced in places almost to a scarp, a slope rather than a true upstanding bank. Outside the bank there are traces of a fosse, a defensive ditch, which is the classic arrangement for an enclosed settlement or boundary feature of early medieval Ireland. A causeway, roughly two metres wide at the top and sitting about forty centimetres above the surrounding ground, carries an original entrance across the fosse at the east-south-east side, aligned with a gap through the inner bank that narrows considerably at its base. A large stone protrudes from the base of the bank at the south-east, possibly a remnant of more substantial stonework. The interior slopes gently toward the north-east and holds several slight natural depressions. The enclosure appears on the revised 1913 edition of the Ordnance Survey twenty-five-inch map as a small circular earthwork, and aerial photography shows it still surviving today, marked out by a ring of trees.

The tree line that now defines the monument is visible from above in aerial imagery, which is often the clearest way to appreciate its shape. On the ground, the wet pasture surrounding the slight rise gives some sense of why this particular spot was chosen, modest as its elevation is; even a small height advantage in low-lying Westmeath terrain would have made a difference to drainage and visibility alike.