What the Ordnance Survey's six-inch maps once recorded as a defined circular earthwork, roughly 37 metres across, has softened almost beyond recognition. Today, the only thing marking its presence is a faint subcircular area, measuring around 46 metres on its north-south axis, picked out not by any earthwork but by a change in vegetation, a slightly different cast of grass or scrub that betrays something underneath.

Enclosures of this type are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, typically associated with early medieval settlement, though they can date from a much broader range of periods. A ringfort or rath, to use the more familiar terms, would once have consisted of an earthen bank and ditch encircling a farmstead, providing a degree of protection and marking out a household's territory. At Lissyconor, whatever structure once stood has been reduced to this botanical ghost, visible in the landscape only because the soil beneath, disturbed or compressed long ago, still influences what grows above it. The site sits in grassland with bogland opening out to the south, a classic arrangement in the west of Ireland where settled ground and wet ground exist in close proximity.