There is no earthwork to visit, no stone to touch, and nothing to distinguish this particular hillside from any other. The enclosures exist, for now, mainly as photographs taken from the air.

The site came to light through aerial photography carried out in August 1996, when the outlines of a large circular enclosure and a smaller one conjoined to its north-east appeared as cropmarks. Cropmarks form when buried features, such as the filled ditches that once defined an enclosure's boundary, cause the vegetation above them to grow differently from the surrounding soil, differences that become legible only when viewed from altitude, often in dry summers when crop stress is most pronounced. The two enclosures at Rochestown follow a pattern well known across Ireland, where ringforts and their related enclosures, most dating from the early medieval period, survive in their thousands, though not always above ground. At this particular site, the land has been under tillage, which gradually erodes any upstanding remains. The only physical hint that something lies beneath is a slight dip in the ground surface, thought to correspond to the position of the larger enclosure.