That absence of fences is quietly telling: the land around this ringfort has been reorganised and reworked over the centuries, yet the earthwork itself has endured, its bank still rising to a height of 2.8 metres and enclosing an interior that measures roughly 33 metres north to south and 35 metres east to west.

A ringfort, or rath, is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically dating from somewhere between the fifth and twelfth centuries. They were the basic unit of rural settlement across Ireland for much of that era, built by farming families who raised an earthen bank, sometimes topped with a timber palisade, around a cluster of domestic buildings. The bank at Knockeenbwee is substantial enough to suggest a reasonably prosperous household. A shallow external fosse, a defensive ditch, runs along the western side, adding a further line of separation between the interior and the surrounding land. The interior itself is slightly raised, particularly towards the north, a feature that often results from centuries of settlement activity building up the ground level within the enclosure. Two gaps break the circuit of the bank: one to the east, 3.6 metres wide, which appears to be a modern opening, and a narrower one to the west, 1.8 metres wide, where there is a sharp drop on the outside, suggesting this western gap may be considerably older and perhaps the original point of entry.