Nothing visible marks the surface today, yet aerial photographs reveal the clear cropmark of a bivallate enclosure, one defined by two concentric ditches, with an inner diameter of roughly 40 metres and an outer diameter of around 60 metres. Cropmarks of this kind appear when buried ditches or banks affect the moisture and nutrients available to overlying crops, causing subtle differences in growth and colour that become readable only from altitude.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths or lios, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a homestead and its associated outbuildings within one or more earthen banks and ditches. The Hilltown example is unusual in having not two but three ditch features: the expected inner and outer fosses, and a third that runs closely alongside the innermost, sitting in the space between the two principal enclosures. What purpose this additional feature served is unclear. Equally striking is the absence of any detectable entrance, which tends to be a standard and visible element of such enclosures. Adding further interest, a second rath lies approximately 100 metres to the east-northeast, suggesting this corner of Wexford once supported a cluster of enclosed farmsteads in close proximity to one another.