What was once a defined enclosure is now more felt than seen, a raised scarp roughly 35 metres north to south and 30 metres east to west, with the earthen bank reaching about 1.5 metres in height where it can be traced at all. The monument sits on a gentle south-facing slope, with a stream curving naturally around its western and south-western sides, an arrangement that would have added a ready-made defensive or boundary function to the site's layout.

The earthwork belongs to a class of monument commonly described as a ringfort, the most numerous type of archaeological site in Ireland, typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth century. They served as enclosed farmsteads for farming families of varying social rank, their banks and ditches, known as a fosse, marking territory and providing a degree of protection for livestock and households. At Knocknaglory, the fosse, which measures over five metres in overall width, is visible only along the north-western to north-eastern arc, the rest being choked by dense growth. The interior itself is ungrazed, thick with tall grasses and nettles, and the encroaching trees are gradually narrowing the open ground within the perimeter. Nearby, roughly 55 metres to the north-north-east, a separate enclosure sits on the same landscape, suggesting this small area held some significance over a prolonged period. Perhaps most intriguing is the cluster of yellow flag irises growing along the outer edge of the fosse at the south-east. Yellow flags often mark wet ground fed by a spring, and it is thought the spring here may once have supplied a holy well recorded within the south-eastern sector of the site, a conjunction of secular enclosure and sacred water source that was far from unusual in early medieval Ireland.