The trees have rooted themselves around the complete circuit of the bank, tracing the boundary of the enclosure as faithfully as if they were planted to mark it. One hawthorn grows directly at the northern side of what appears to be the original entrance, where a slight causeway, just a quarter of a metre high, carries the threshold over a shallow, flat-bottomed fosse. Hawthorn has long been associated in Irish folk tradition with the boundaries between worlds, and its presence here, following the perimeter so precisely, lends the site an atmosphere that the bare measurements alone do not quite convey.

The structure itself is a rath, a type of ringfort built and occupied primarily during the early medieval period in Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. These enclosures served as defended farmsteads, the bank and ditch forming a boundary that kept livestock in and wolves or opportunistic raiders out. The Bayswell example sits just below the crest of a north-facing hill in gently undulating pasture, positioned so that it commands good views in all directions except upslope to the south. The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring about 28 metres north to south and just over 30 metres east to west. Its defining bank, between roughly three and four and a half metres wide overall, carries a notably high stone content in places, with small boulders and larger stones set in a clay matrix rather than formed from earth alone. The fosse, the defensive ditch outside the bank, is most clearly visible in the south-western to south-eastern arc of the site, where stones define its outer edge, and a shallower fosse is also traceable in the west, near the probable entrance. The interior is flat and grass-covered, giving little away about what stood here once.