The earthwork is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was the standard form of enclosed farmstead across early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Thousands were built, and thousands have since been ploughed flat or quietly absorbed into field systems, leaving only faint signatures in the soil.

The monument at Baurnalicka was recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1923 as a clearly embanked circular enclosure with a diameter of around forty metres. By the time Denis Power compiled the site record, uploaded in August 2011, the picture had changed considerably. The enclosure now measures approximately 39.5 metres north to south and 38 metres east to west, and the earthen bank that once defined it has been substantially reduced, surviving to an internal height of only 0.2 metres and an external height of 0.3 metres along the arc running from the north-west to the south-west. The north-western to south-western arc has vanished altogether. A field boundary that once abutted the enclosure at the north-west, visible on the 1923 map, has also been removed. On the south-south-east to south-west section, a dry-stone field wall cuts across the line of the bank, suggesting the enclosure's edge was at some point conscripted into ordinary agricultural use rather than respected as a distinct feature.

The interior is level under pasture, with some limestone breaking the surface, which is typical of this part of Limerick where thin soils sit over carboniferous rock. The clearest way to read the site is to walk its perimeter and note where the ground rises slightly underfoot, particularly along the surviving north-west to south-west arc. A derelict cottage sits immediately outside the enclosing bank at the south-west, a reminder that the land around the rath continued to be settled and farmed long after the ringfort itself fell out of use. The surviving bank sections are subtle enough that the overall shape only becomes legible once you are looking for it deliberately, moving slowly around the edge rather than across the middle.