What the first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded as a clearly defined circular enclosure had, by the third edition in 1932, become something rather different, a roughly circular tree-lined depression roughly 45 metres across, with no visible surface trace of the original earthwork remaining.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were typically enclosed farmsteads of the early medieval period, defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches and used as both a domestic and a defensive space. The Mountpotter example appears to have followed a path common to demesne landscapes across Ireland, where older earthworks were quietly absorbed into the aesthetic schemes of landed estates. The 1932 map shows more than a dozen tree-rings within the same demesne, suggesting a deliberate and repeated pattern. The ringfort's circular form, already hollowed by time, may simply have made it a convenient ready-made planting feature, its ancient geometry reused as a landscape ornament without anyone necessarily thinking much about what lay beneath the turf.