Lissaniska translates from Lios an Uisce as "ringfort of the water", and that small detail lodges in the mind more than the earthworks themselves might, given how thoroughly time and agricultural use have worn them down. What survives is a univallate rath, meaning a ringfort enclosed by a single bank rather than the multiple concentric defences you sometimes find at higher-status sites, and even that single bank has been considerably levelled.

The enclosure is roughly sub-circular, measuring 41 metres north to south and 39 metres east to west, which gives a sense of a reasonably substantial interior, even if the surrounding bank now rises only about 1.2 metres above the external ground level and around 0.7 metres above the interior. At its base the bank varies between 7 and 11 metres wide, that spread suggesting the original material has slumped and flattened considerably over the centuries. The interior slopes gently southward and south-south-east, and there is a 3-metre gap in the bank, most likely the original entrance point. A fieldbank now bounds the site to the south-west, becoming part of the ordinary agricultural geometry of the landscape. C. Toal's North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995, recorded the site in this condition and gave it its catalogue number; the townland name the rath carries is simply that of the ground it sits on, which is itself named for the feature.

Ringforts of this kind were the standard form of enclosed farmstead across early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. They were not primarily military structures; the bank and its original accompanying ditch would have defined a household's space, kept livestock in, and offered a degree of social as well as physical boundary. That Lissaniska's water-linked name has persisted in the landscape long after the bank itself was largely lost suggests the place held enough local significance to keep its identity, even as the earthwork slowly disappeared into the fields around it.