The road, which marks the boundary between Piercefield and the neighbouring Johnstown townland, cuts straight through the north-eastern half of the site, effectively erasing it. What the road-builders left behind is still worth attention, but the geometry of the original enclosure now exists only in part.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when constructed from earth rather than stone, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a farmstead within one or more circular banks and ditches. The Piercefield example sits on top of a prominent hill in open grassland, a position that would have offered both visibility and a degree of natural advantage to whoever occupied it. On the south side of the road, a substantial earthen bank survives, roughly one and a half metres wide, curving from south to west. Beyond it lies a wide, shallow external fosse, the ditch that would originally have run around the full circuit of the enclosure. The combination of elevated ground and a commanding outlook suggests this was a deliberate and considered choice of location, even if the road has since severed it from its own past.