A ringfort, sometimes called a rath or cashel depending on its construction materials, was typically a circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank or a stone wall, used as a farmstead or settlement during the early medieval period. What makes the Mondellihy pair worth attention is both what was recorded about them and what remains today.

The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp, writing in 1921, described what he called the Mondellihy Rings as two earthen rings lying north and south of one another, noting that one was stone-faced and capped with dry stone walls. That description gives a clearer picture than anything visible on the ground today. The northern of the two monuments, classified as a cashel given its stone construction, survives as a slightly raised circular area measuring roughly 19 metres north to south and 20 metres east to west. Its defining bank, once a more substantial earth and stone structure, has been reduced largely to a low scarp, just 0.4 metres high and about 1.8 metres wide, and has been levelled across its northeastern through to southern arc. Situated on a gentle east-facing slope about 8 metres north of the townland boundary with Gortaganniff, the site sits in ordinary farmland with moderate views in most directions. Its companion ringfort lies immediately to the south.

Access to this kind of site in the Irish countryside almost always depends on the co-operation of landowners, as these monuments typically sit within working agricultural fields. The area is in pasture, so ground conditions underfoot will vary considerably with the season. What Google Earth imagery from 2018 confirms is that the monument remains visible from above even in its reduced state, the circular outline still legible against the surrounding field. On the ground, the scarp is subtle enough that it could be passed without notice. Visitors with an interest in early medieval settlement patterns will find more to consider in the juxtaposition of the two sites than in either one alone, and Westropp's original description, brief as it is, remains the most useful guide to what the northern example once looked like before agricultural levelling took its toll.