The enclosure measures thirty-four metres in diameter, and the bank rises to about a metre in height, modest enough that a passing walker might take it for a natural undulation in the ground rather than a deliberate construction. The interior has gone largely to ferns.

What looks unremarkable from a distance is, in fact, a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common type of early medieval settlement monument found across Ireland. Thousands were built, mostly between roughly 500 and 1000 AD, as enclosed farmsteads for single family groups. The earthen bank, and any accompanying ditch, defined a boundary as much social and symbolic as it was defensive. A rath of this kind would originally have contained a timber house, animal pens, and storage pits, all of which have long since vanished into the soil. What remains at Knockanare is the skeleton of that boundary, holding its shape in the hillside after more than a millennium.