A slight earthen bank, a steep fosse visible only from the north-east to east-south-east arc, and ground so thoroughly levelled that the ringfort beneath it must be inferred as much as observed. Yet the fact that something persists at all, on a small natural hillock rising out of gently undulating Westmeath pasture, makes this a quietly instructive example of how much has been quietly erased from the Irish landscape.

A ringfort, sometimes called a rath, is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically circular and bounded by one or more earthen banks and ditches. The one at Benisonlodge was recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1837 as a clearly circular enclosure, already interrupted at its north-east by a field fence running north-west to south-east. By the time the twenty-five-inch edition was surveyed in 1911, the shape had shifted: the enclosure appeared irregular rather than round, measuring roughly thirty-eight metres north to south and forty metres east to west. That alteration in outline across seven decades likely reflects progressive agricultural disturbance rather than any change in the underlying monument. Another ringfort lies approximately 330 metres to the south-west, suggesting this part of County Westmeath was reasonably well settled during the early medieval centuries. The fosse, the ditch that would originally have reinforced the enclosing bank, appears to have been re-cut at some point in modern times, a reminder that field drainage and land improvement have continued to reshape sites long after the original occupants are forgotten.