A circular enclosure roughly 26.6 metres in diameter, defined by a low bank of earth and stone, it is the kind of site that rewards attention precisely because it asks for it.

A rath, to use the Irish term, was typically a farmstead of the early medieval period, enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches, and used as a defended homestead by a farming family of some local standing. Thousands once existed across Ireland, and their survival rate varies enormously depending on whether the land around them was ever ploughed, built upon, or, as appears to have happened here, subdivided by later field boundaries. At Lissatunny, a field wall running roughly northeast to southwest cuts directly across the monument at its west-northwest and south-southeast sides, bisecting what would once have been a coherent enclosed space. The cartographic record supports the identification of this as a rath rather than any later structure, though the physical remains are now very poorly preserved. The choice of a hillock summit for the site is consistent with early medieval practice, where a slightly elevated position offered both practical drainage and a degree of visibility over the surrounding land.