Not destroyed, not built over, simply swallowed. A fenced-off stand of coniferous trees now occupies the site, with a dense understorey of briars and scrub so thick that the earthen bank encircling it cannot be reached, let alone examined.

Ringforts, sometimes called raths, are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. They were enclosed farmsteads, the circular bank and ditch serving as a boundary and a modest defence for a family's dwelling and livestock. The example at Shannongrove was still clearly legible when it was mapped by the Ordnance Survey in 1923, recorded on their six-inch series as an embanked circular enclosure. Compiled by Denis Power and uploaded to the national record in August 2011, the site entry notes the transition from visible monument to inaccessible one, the pasture around it continuing its ordinary agricultural life while the interior has been overtaken entirely by plantation and undergrowth.

The site lies in open farmland, and the fenced enclosure of conifers is visible from the surrounding fields, though the trees themselves now obscure any sense of the earthwork beneath. There is no public access through the fence, and the undergrowth described in the record makes any close inspection essentially impossible in any season. What remains of interest to a visitor is the landscape context: the position just below a hilltop on a north-east-facing slope is typical of ringfort placement, and looking across the low hill gives a reasonable sense of why such a location was chosen. The monument itself, however, is for the moment better understood through the map than through the ground.