Ringforts were typically circular farmsteads, defended by one or more earthen banks and ditches, and used as homesteads from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. This particular example at Knockatee has been partially levelled, leaving only the faintest evidence of its original form.

What survives is a raised area measuring approximately 29 metres across on its north-west to south-east axis and 27 metres on its north-east to south-west axis, defined by a low scarp with slight traces of a bank surviving at the eastern side. The interior rises gently towards its centre, and faint cultivation ridges, narrow parallel earthen mounds left by old ploughing practices, run across it in a north-east to south-west direction, suggesting the ground was worked agriculturally at some point after the ringfort fell out of use, or possibly during its occupation. A modern field fence cuts across the north-eastern edge of the monument, a small reminder of how farming has continued to reshape and overwrite the landscape here across the centuries. A second ringfort sits roughly 150 metres to the west-south-west, which hints that the immediate area was a focus of early settlement activity rather than an isolated homestead.