A rath, or ringfort, is a circular earthwork enclosure, typically built during the early medieval period and used as a farmstead or place of settlement, its raised bank offering both a practical boundary and a degree of defence. At Knockaunavad, that bank has been largely levelled, and the field boundaries that once hemmed in the site to the east and south have been removed entirely, leaving a broad open expanse that gives little visual clue to what lies beneath the grass.

When Denis Power compiled the record uploaded in August 2011, the monument was cross-referenced against the 1923 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, which shows a clearly embanked circular enclosure roughly thirty metres in diameter, sitting in the south-east corner of a field just below the brow of the hill. By the time of survey, the levelling was already done, though the scarped edge, the cut or sloped face of the original bank, could still be traced running from west-north-west through to east-north-east. That surviving earthwork varies considerably along its length: at the north-west and north-east ends it is barely perceptible, standing only around ten centimetres high and under two metres wide, but at the northern arc it becomes genuinely legible, rising to about one and a half metres in height and spreading to over nine metres in width. The interior remains level and grassed over.

Finding the site requires patience and a good eye for slight changes in gradient. The most readable section of the scarp is at the northern side, where the ground drops more noticeably and the width of the earthwork underfoot is enough to register as something deliberate. The slope itself is steep and the orientation north-westward means the light can be flat for much of the day, so a low morning or evening sun, especially in spring or autumn, is the best condition for picking out the subtle relief. There is nothing to see in the interior beyond level pasture, but standing at the surviving northern scarp and looking back across what was once a defined enclosure gives a reasonable sense of the original scale of the place.