Was it an original entrance, later widened by centuries of livestock and farm traffic? Or was the bank breached deliberately at some point, the earthwork pressed into service as an enclosure long after its builders had gone? No record survives to settle the matter, and the scrub vegetation that has crept across the monument makes the ground harder still to read.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were the dominant settlement form in early medieval Ireland, roughly from the fifth to the twelfth century. They typically enclosed a family farmstead within a circular bank and ditch, and many thousands survive across the country in varying degrees of preservation. The example at Highpark sits on a south-east-facing slope in gently undulating pasture, and its dimensions were recorded by Denis Power in survey notes uploaded in June 2013. The circular enclosure measures approximately 37 metres on a north-west to south-east axis and 34 metres north-east to south-west. The defining feature is a scarped edge, meaning the ground was cut away and shaped rather than simply mounded, standing about 1.5 metres high and nearly 5 metres wide. Beyond it runs an external fosse, the term for the ditch that typically accompanied such banks, here measuring around 2.4 metres across, with a counter-scarp bank on the outer edge adding a further modest rise. There is a second, narrower gap in the bank at the south-south-west, just 2 metres wide, which may represent the original entrance. The interior surface is uneven and falls away toward the north, south-east, and south-west.

The site sits within working farmland, so access depends on the goodwill of the landowner and an awareness that the scrub obscuring parts of the monument can make the earthworks difficult to follow at ground level. The scarped bank reads more clearly from a slight distance, where the difference in ground level becomes apparent against the surrounding pasture. The fosse, though modest in surviving height, is still traceable on the outer edge. Visiting in late winter or early spring, before the vegetation thickens, gives the clearest view of the monument's outline and the contrast between the two entrance gaps in the bank.