It is a small detail, but it is the kind of thing that makes a lump of earth in a Munster field suddenly feel inhabited rather than merely archaeological. Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were the standard enclosed farmstead of early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. They were not military fortifications in any grand sense but rather domestic enclosures, the raised banks and ditches marking the boundary of a family's dwelling space and livestock yard.

The Drombanny example sits on a north-east-facing slope in gently rolling pasture, and its form was recorded by Denis Power, with the record uploaded in March 2013. The enclosure is sub-circular, measuring approximately 35 metres northwest to southeast and around 30 metres northeast to southwest, dimensions that are fairly typical for a rath of this kind. What gives it a slightly more complex profile than a simple banked circle is the variation in how the boundary is constructed. Along the arc from north-north-east to east-south-east, the perimeter is formed by a scarped edge, essentially the slope of the ground cut and shaped to a height of around 1.6 metres, making use of the natural topography. Everywhere else, a built-up bank takes over, standing about 0.6 metres above the interior and nearly 1.9 metres above the external ground level, and roughly 2.3 metres wide. An external fosse, a ditch running around the outside of the bank, encircles the whole thing.

The site is not easy to read at ground level. Dense scrub vegetation now masks much of the monument, which means the earthworks are better understood by knowing what to look for rather than by simply arriving and expecting a clear view. The interior slopes gently downward toward the south, and the break in the northern bank, at just over three metres across, is likely the original entrance. Visitors approaching through the pasture should move carefully around the perimeter first, since the external fosse, even when overgrown, can be uneven underfoot. The scrub also means that the scarped edge along the northern and eastern arc is more easily felt than seen, a gradual drop in the ground that only makes sense once you understand the structure it once defined.