Most ringforts, the circular enclosures built across Ireland from the early medieval period onwards, present a fairly legible outline: a raised bank, sometimes doubled or trebled, enclosing a roughly circular area where a farmstead once stood. What survives at Sheefin is less tidy than that. Several banks have been recorded here, but they do not resolve themselves into any recognisable form, leaving the site in an ambiguous category, identifiable as something deliberate but not quite readable as anything specific.

The earthwork does appear on William Larkin's 1808 Map of Westmeath, one of the more detailed county surveys produced in Ireland during the early nineteenth century, which at least confirms that something visible and noteworthy was present here more than two centuries ago. Whether Larkin's surveyors understood what they were recording is another matter. The designation as a ringfort may reflect the general character of the location and period rather than any clear formal evidence, and the irregular arrangement of banks suggests the possibility of later disturbance, partial collapse, or simply a structure that was never completed or whose purpose remains unclear.