Measuring around 22 metres in diameter, it survives as a bank, and even that is incomplete; no visible surface trace remains along its south-eastern arc. It is the kind of archaeological feature that asks more of a visitor than most, demanding a willingness to read absence as much as presence.

Circular enclosures of this type are a familiar if still poorly understood feature of the Irish landscape. Many are the remains of ring-forts, known in Irish as raths or cashels depending on whether they were built from earth or stone, and they served as enclosed farmsteads throughout the early medieval period, roughly from the fifth to the twelfth century. Others may be prehistoric in origin. At Moneyveen, the surviving earthwork is too fragmentary to say much with certainty. What can be said is that whoever shaped this ring chose a slight elevation above the surrounding wet ground, a practical decision that would have kept a dwelling or enclosure marginally drier and more defensible than the marsh around it.