That detail alone sets it apart from the hundreds of raths, those circular earthwork enclosures built mainly during the early medieval period as farmsteads and homesteads, which are scattered across the Irish countryside and which visitors can generally walk up to without ceremony. Here, permission to visit was refused, leaving the site recorded largely on the basis of local tradition and earlier written accounts.

The most concrete description comes from a 1934 paper by Bowman, who identified two single-ramparted ringforts on land then belonging to a Joseph Nunan. The two forts measured 39 yards and 27 yards respectively, placing them at the smaller end of the scale for such monuments. A single-ramparted rath, the most common type, consists of one earthen bank and ditch encircling a central area; larger or more important sites sometimes carried two or three concentric ramparts. Whether the Rossline example corresponds to the larger or the smaller of Bowman's pair has not been confirmed, which adds a layer of ambiguity to an already elusive site. Local tradition of a fort in the area predates even Bowman's account, suggesting the earthwork was visible and known to people living nearby long before any formal archaeological record was made.

Given that access has been refused in the past, this is not a site a visitor could reasonably plan to explore.