That the stone survives at all is notable, given that the earthwork enclosing it has largely vanished. What was once a substantial circular rath, roughly 54 metres in diameter, is today invisible from aerial photography, swallowed back into the farmland around it.

The site was recorded on the revised 1913 Ordnance Survey 25-inch map as a clearly defined earthwork. When it was described on the ground in 1970, the picture was already one of gradual erasure. A bank and external fosse, the shallow ditch that would originally have ringed the enclosure, still existed in partial form. The bank was best preserved along the north-northeast to east arc, while elsewhere it had been worn down to little more than a scarp, with several modern gaps breaking what remained. The fosse showed faintly on the northwest-north-northeast and south-southwest sides. A rath of this type would typically have enclosed a farmstead or small settlement in early medieval Ireland, the bank and fosse serving as a boundary marker as much as a defensive feature. At Joristown, the interior rises gently toward the centre, drawing the eye toward the bullaun stone, which endures as the one tangible object in a landscape where the surrounding monument has otherwise been levelled away.