Most ringforts, the roughly circular enclosed farmsteads built across Ireland during the early medieval period, present visitors with a fairly uniform experience: a raised interior, a bank or two, a ditch. At Reynella, the enclosed area contains something more to puzzle over.

The fort sits on the north-east facing slope of a natural hillock, with a stream running close by to the north-east, a practical arrangement typical of early settlement choices that combined elevation with a reliable water source. It is bivallate, meaning it has two concentric earthen banks separated by a fosse, the ditch cut between them that would have added both a physical and psychological barrier to entry. The interior measures roughly 28 metres north to south and 30 metres east to west, and rises slightly towards its centre. The inner bank is now fragmentary, standing to about 0.7 metres, while the outer bank has been worn down to little more than 0.15 metres. The fosse is best preserved on the south-western side, where it reaches 4.2 metres in width. A clearly defined entrance gap on the eastern side, just over two metres wide, is accompanied by a causeway crossing the fosse, still standing half a metre high. What distinguishes the interior, though, is an additional linear earthen bank running across the north-west quadrant towards the centre. There it meets the remains of a rectangular hut site and a possible second, circular one, suggesting that the enclosed space was organised and subdivided in ways that went beyond simple enclosure, perhaps reflecting different phases of occupation or distinct domestic functions within a single household compound.