The circular earthen bank, measuring nearly thirty-eight metres across, still traces its arc from the south-east around to the north, rising just over a metre above the rough ground around it. But the interior has been extensively quarried, so whatever once lay within has been broken open and removed, leaving behind a landscape that feels more interrogated than preserved. At the centre, there is what may be a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber of the kind commonly built within ringforts for storage or concealment, though whether it survives intact beneath the disturbed ground is unclear.

Ringforts, sometimes called raths when they are earthen rather than stone-built, are among the most common archaeological features in the Irish countryside, with tens of thousands recorded across the island. Most date to the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, and functioned as enclosed farmsteads for families of some local standing. The one at Lissaniska sits in rough ground broken by rock outcrops and patches of woodland, which may partly explain why the earthen bank has held on at all while the interior was picked apart. Quarrying within and around ringforts was widespread historically; the enclosed area offered a convenient source of stone, and once a site lost its social or ritual significance, practical use tended to win out.