What makes this enclosure quietly puzzling is not just its age but a note recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1843, which marks it as a planted earthwork. That phrase suggests that by the mid-nineteenth century, whoever surveyed it believed the feature had been deliberately laid out or landscaped, perhaps as a garden or ornamental ground feature, rather than recognised as something far older. A stream runs along its southern edge, and the combination of the sloping terrain, the watercourse, and the enclosed ground gives the site an atmosphere that sits somewhere between the domestic and the ceremonial.

The enclosure itself is oval to subrectangular in plan, oriented north to south, measuring approximately 36 metres in length and 24 metres in width. It is defined by a bank roughly 2.3 to 2.5 metres wide and standing about 1.2 metres high, with an outer fosse, a shallow ditch, running just beyond it at around 2.5 metres wide and 0.45 metres deep. What complicates any straightforward reading of the site is what lies within. Archaeological survey has identified three features inside the enclosure that are considered possible ring-barrows, low circular mounds typically associated with prehistoric burial practices, sometimes surrounding a central interment beneath a raised earthen ring. The presence of three such features within a single enclosure is unusual, and their relationship to the enclosing bank remains unresolved. The site was compiled for the Archaeological Survey of Ireland by Geraldine Stout and Padraig Clancy, with a revised record uploaded in July 2018.

The enclosure sits in a relatively quiet part of north County Dublin, on ground that descends towards the Slade valley. Access to the immediate area around Glenareen House would require local knowledge and appropriate permissions, as the site lies on private land. The sloping terrain means the bank is best appreciated from the lower, southern side, where the drop of the ground helps to make the earthwork more legible against the hillside. Visiting in late autumn or winter, when vegetation has died back, would give the clearest view of the bank and fosse profile. The three internal features are subtle and would not draw the eye without knowing to look for them.