The site is unassuming in the way that many of Ireland's estimated 40,000 to 50,000 ringforts are unassuming, yet the details of its construction reward a closer look.

A ringfort, or rath, was typically a farmstead of the early medieval period, enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches to protect livestock and define territory rather than serve any serious military function. At Lackeen, the enclosure is roughly circular, measuring approximately 30 metres north-west to south-east and 28 metres north-east to south-west. It is defined by an inner fosse, a ditch dug roughly half a metre deep, and an outer bank that rises about 45 centimetres above the exterior ground level and spreads to over five metres in width. Beyond that bank lies a second, outer fosse, somewhat deeper at around 90 centimetres. This double-ditch arrangement, though not elaborate by the standards of the more defended examples, suggests a deliberate layering of boundaries around the enclosed space. A causeway still crosses the outer fosse to the south, leading to a gap in the bank roughly one and a half metres wide, the original entrance to the enclosure. To the north-west, a drainage channel and a field boundary have cut across and partially damaged both the bank and the fosses, the ordinary work of agricultural land management eroding the edges of a structure that otherwise survived more or less intact through the centuries. The site sits about 40 metres east of the Awbeg River, the same waterway that flows through Spenser's Faerie Queene under the name Mulla, lending the surrounding landscape a faint literary echo alongside its archaeological one.