The ground here was once shaped deliberately, carefully even, into a form that served as an enclosed farmstead, probably for an early medieval family of some local standing. Today the enclosure has been levelled, and what remains blends so thoroughly into the hillside that a casual eye might register nothing unusual at all. Yet the oval outline, roughly 21 metres north to south and 18 metres east to west, is still legible to anyone who knows what to look for.

The site is a rath, the Irish term for a roughly circular or oval earthen ringfort, a class of monument built in their thousands across Ireland during the early medieval period, broadly from around the fifth to the twelfth centuries. They typically enclosed a family's dwelling and outbuildings within a raised bank and external ditch. At Knockroe, that ditch, or fosse, still traces a partial arc from south around to the north-west, measuring nearly six metres wide and surviving to a depth of around half a metre. The bank, or scarp, is largely indistinct now from the natural fall of the hill. What makes the engineering readable, even in its diminished state, is the way the monument was adapted to its terrain: the builders cut into the slope on the western, uphill side, and used the excavated material to raise the eastern side, compensating for the gradient and producing a level interior platform. Two mature trees now grow on the eastern scarp, marking the line of the old boundary as clearly as any signpost.

The site sits in open pasture on an east-facing slope, recorded by Denis Power and uploaded to the national monuments record in November 2013. Because it lies in farmland, access would require the landowner's permission, and there is no formal path or interpretive provision. The views across the landscape to the north-west and south are considerable, which is almost certainly why the spot was chosen in the first place; a commanding prospect was a practical asset for an early medieval household, not merely an aesthetic one. Visiting in winter or early spring, when grass growth is low, makes the surviving earthworks considerably easier to trace.