A rath, as these early medieval earthwork enclosures are known, typically presents as a roughly circular bank and ditch defining a farmstead that may be fifteen hundred years old or more. This one, however, is no longer a circle. What survives is a D-shaped area, around 23 metres north to south and 24 metres east to west, where a scarped edge, a low cut into the natural ground surface barely 0.3 metres high and around 6 metres wide, runs from the east-northeast around to the northwest. The northern arc of the enclosure has been replaced entirely by a dry-stone field wall running east to west, and beyond that wall there is no trace of any original earthwork at all.

The 1841 Ordnance Survey six-inch map records the enclosure as a complete circle of approximately 30 metres in diameter, which means the northern section was still legible, or at least mappable, in the mid-nineteenth century. By the time the 1923 OS six-inch map was produced, a field boundary was shown pressing up against the scarped edge to the southwest; that boundary has since been removed, leaving a low earthen bank, roughly 0.5 metres high, overlying the scarp on a northeast-to-southwest line. Denis Power, who compiled the site record uploaded in August 2011, suggests this bank is most likely the remains of that former field division rather than any original feature of the rath itself. The gradual absorption of ancient enclosures into working farmland is a familiar pattern across Ireland, but the Finniterstown example offers a particularly clear before-and-after, readable by comparing the two OS maps.

The site sits atop a low rise in gently undulating pasture, unassuming from a distance and easy to overlook. A break roughly 7 metres wide in the eastern scarp serves as a routine cattle crossing, so the interior is actively used by livestock. Both the interior and the enclosing earthwork are heavily overgrown with briars and nettles, which makes close inspection uncomfortable outside the winter months when growth dies back. Those consulting the older OS six-inch maps before visiting will find it easier to read what remains against what is recorded, and to trace where the northern arc of the original enclosure once ran before the field wall claimed its ground.