The enclosure measures roughly 19.6 metres across and is defined by a bank of earth and stone, standing only about 0.7 metres high, that runs from the west-northwest around to the east. It is only partial, not a complete ring, which is itself a point of curiosity. A stone set radially across the bank on the eastern side adds a deliberate, structured quality to what might otherwise read as a natural feature.

What gives the site a particular weight is the presence of a burial ground in its northeastern quadrant. Enclosures of this kind in Ireland are broadly prehistoric in character, though the association with a burial ground introduces a layered history that is difficult to date without excavation. The combination is not without parallel elsewhere in Cork and across Munster: circular earthworks, sometimes interpreted as ring forts or earlier ceremonial spaces, occasionally accumulated later funerary use as communities recognised or reimagined the significance of an already-marked piece of ground. A ring fort, to give the term its usual meaning, was a roughly circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, used in early medieval Ireland primarily as a farmstead. Whether this site at Minanes fits that category precisely, or represents something older or differently purposed, the surviving evidence does not settle.