The bank, about a metre high and enclosing a diameter of roughly 37.5 metres, still holds the shallow ghost of an outer fosse, the defensive ditch that once reinforced the perimeter. More intriguing are a series of cell-like features recorded within the bank itself, one circular, one rectangular, their purpose still uncertain.

When P. J. Hartnett surveyed the site in 1939, he noted an outer rampart surviving to the north, along with these two distinct cells built into the bank, one to the north-west and one to the east. Local tradition held that they were the remains of limekilns, small industrial structures once used to burn limestone into quicklime for agricultural or building use. Hartnett examined the evidence carefully and found no trace of burning in the material, which makes the kilns interpretation hard to sustain. His notes record the features clearly, but later inspection found no visible surface trace of them remaining, suggesting that subsequent disturbance had erased what he saw. That disturbance is documented too: the field fences surrounding the rath were removed at some point, and the cleared material was dumped into the interior, further complicating any reading of the original ground surface. A rath, broadly speaking, was an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically home to a single family and their livestock, and the earthen bank would originally have been topped by a timber palisade or hedge. What the cells in the Shanakill bank represent, whether storage, a souterrain entrance, or something else entirely, remains an open question. Adding to the density of the immediate landscape, the same field to the north-west contains a standing stone and the levelled remains of a cashel, a stone-walled enclosure of similar period, suggesting this small patch of Cork countryside was once far more intensively used and structured than its present pastoral quiet implies.