The enclosing bank is so low on its interior face, barely twenty centimetres above the ground, that it scarcely announces itself. Only from the outside, where the bank rises to about seventy centimetres, or along the scraped and shaped edge to the north-east and south, where the ground drops away by more than a metre, does the deliberate geometry of the place begin to register.

This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the type of enclosed farmstead that was built and occupied across Ireland primarily during the early medieval period, roughly from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Ringforts served as defended homesteads, their banks and ditches marking out domestic and agricultural space as much as offering any serious military protection. The Mornane example follows the typical form: a roughly circular enclosure, here approximately twenty-five metres in diameter, defined by a combination of an earth-and-stone bank and a scarped, or artificially cut and shaped, natural edge. The siting on a limestone ridge is characteristic too, since such elevated ground offered good drainage and visibility. Boulders have since been dumped on top of the bank at the southern side, a reminder that agricultural clearance has continued to alter the landscape around and on top of these monuments long after their original use ended. The site was recorded by Denis Power and aerial photographs were taken in March 2006 as part of the Archaeological Survey of Ireland.

Access would require crossing private farmland, so permission from the landowner would be necessary before any visit. The dense overgrowth of thorn bushes that obscures the enclosing bank from the west around to the north-east also covers the interior almost entirely, meaning the internal topography, including what appears to be a gentle rise towards the centre, is effectively hidden beneath vegetation. The outer edge and the scarped section to the north-east are the most readable parts of the monument from the outside. Winter, when the thorn cover is thinnest, would offer the clearest sense of the earthwork's shape and extent.