It shows up as a cropmark, the kind of ghostly outline that appears in satellite and aerial photographs when buried features affect how plants above them grow, revealing ancient earthworks that have otherwise left no trace above ground. The enclosure is nearly perfectly circular, measuring roughly 63 metres north to south and just over 64 metres east to west, with a continuous ditch somewhere between 2.3 and 2.7 metres wide running around most of its circumference. No definitive entrance gap has been identified, and the north-eastern quadrant is not clearly visible even on aerial imagery, while a later field boundary has cut into the south-eastern arc, possibly pushing a portion of the circuit into the adjacent field to the east.

The site sits at around 88 metres above sea level in gently undulating country, and what is now ordinary farmland was once rather grander in character. The ground here formed part of the parkland demesne associated with Duckett's Grove, a substantial house and castle whose roofless shell still stands about a kilometre to the north-east. The first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, produced around 1840, show this area within the boundaries of that demesne, meaning the enclosure lay quietly beneath landscaped parkland for much of the nineteenth century, unrecognised for what it was. A moated site, a type of medieval enclosed farmstead typically consisting of a platform surrounded by a water-filled ditch, lies roughly 860 metres to the east at Friarstown, suggesting the broader landscape around Russellstown has been shaped by human activity across several different periods. The enclosure itself has not been dated, though circular ditched enclosures of this kind in Ireland range from prehistoric to early medieval in origin.