That kind of incremental erasure is common enough in the Irish landscape, but it rarely makes a site less interesting.

The earthwork at Lisheen is a rath, a type of circular enclosure, typically dating from the early medieval period, that once served as a defended farmstead or high-status residence. This example measures around 35 metres in diameter. Its defining bank, partly tree-lined, can still be traced from the south around through the west to the northwest, though in places the ground simply shelves away in a scarp rather than forming a proper raised bank. An external fosse, a defensive ditch running around the outside of the enclosure, remains visible along a substantial arc from the north-northwest around through north to the southeast. Two gaps in the bank on the west and west-southwest sides appear to be of modern origin rather than original entranceways. The rath sits in undulating grassland with bogland opening out to the north, a landscape that would have looked broadly familiar to whoever first raised these earthworks, even if the road and its traffic would not.