From ground level, the enclosure has disappeared entirely into the rough pasture of a south-facing slope, leaving no visible bank, ditch, or hollow to betray what lies beneath. That absence is itself a kind of information, pointing to centuries of agricultural pressure that have gradually levelled a structure which was once, by any measure, a significant piece of Early Medieval landscape engineering.

Ringforts, sometimes called raths when they are earthen rather than stone-built, were enclosed farmsteads typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. They served as the basic unit of rural settlement across Ireland for much of that period, and thousands survive in varying states of preservation. The Lissyviggeen example is recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1846, where it appears as a roughly circular enclosure with a diameter of approximately thirty metres. That map, produced during the first comprehensive cartographic survey of Ireland, captured many earthworks that were already degraded by the mid-nineteenth century, and in this case it may preserve the only clear documentary evidence of the site's original form. The slope on which it sits looks out towards Mangerton Mountain, one of the higher peaks of the Killarney uplands, which suggests the original builders chose a position with both good drainage and a commanding outlook over the surrounding land.