Yet the rath at Lislehane rewards attention precisely because of what it quietly contains and what has quietly disappeared. Roughly circular, measuring about 48.5 metres east to west and 46.5 metres north to south, it is enclosed by an earthen bank that rises to around 1.7 metres on its outer face. A rath is an earthen ringfort, the most common monument type in the Irish landscape, typically associated with early medieval farmsteads built between roughly 500 and 1000 AD. Most were the enclosed homesteads of farming families, the bank and its accompanying ditch, or fosse, offering a degree of protection for people and livestock alike.

The fosse here, the external ditch that would originally have run around the outside of the bank, survives only partially. It has been infilled to the north, south-east, and south-west, leaving just a shallow depression of around 0.3 metres in depth where it does remain. Two breaks in the bank, one to the east measuring six metres across and one to the south-east at five metres, likely mark original or later entrance points. What makes this particular site a little more layered is the record of features that no longer exist above ground. The first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842 marks a limekiln on the north-west section of the bank; a limekiln was a small stone or earthen furnace used to burn limestone into quicklime for use as agricultural fertiliser or building mortar. No trace of it survives today. By the 1938 revision of the same mapping series, a quarry had appeared just outside the enclosure to the north-west, and that too has since been infilled. Beneath the grass at the centre of the interior, there is evidence of a possible souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, a feature commonly found within ringforts and used variously for storage or refuge.