The only clue to its presence is a very slight curve in a field boundary at the north-west, a ghost of an enclosure that once formed the boundary of an early medieval farmstead. Ringforts, roughly circular enclosures typically defined by an earthen bank and ditch, were the most common form of rural settlement in Ireland between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, and many thousands survive across the country in various states of preservation. This one at Knockloe sits at the far end of that spectrum.

What is known about its original form comes from cartographic evidence rather than anything visible today. The 1838 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, one of the earliest and most detailed surveys of the Irish landscape, recorded a circular area of approximately twenty-five metres in diameter on a gentle north-east-facing slope at this location. That map captured the ringfort at a moment when it was presumably still legible in the terrain, though even then it may have been much reduced. In the nearly two centuries since that survey was made, whatever earthworks remained have been lost almost entirely to agricultural activity, leaving only that faint deflection in the field boundary as evidence that something once stood here.

For anyone curious enough to look, the site sits on a gently sloping field, and the north-western boundary is where the curve, if it can be called that, is most likely to be noticed. It requires a particular kind of attention, the sort that comes from knowing in advance what to look for, since there is nothing at ground level that announces itself as archaeology.