A ringfort, or rath, is an enclosed farmstead typical of early medieval Ireland, usually defined by one or more earthen banks thrown up around a circular or oval area of ground. At Lissanalta, even that modest inheritance has been largely erased, yet the site continues to register in the landscape for those who know where to look.

As recorded in Denis Power's survey entry, uploaded in April 2013, the monument once measured approximately 50 metres on its north-west to south-east axis and around 40 metres east to west, and appeared on the 1924 Ordnance Survey six-inch map as an oval area enclosed by a bank. Since then it has been levelled, most likely through agricultural activity over the intervening decades. What remains are two scarped edges to the west and east of the enclosure, each around 4.5 metres wide and half a metre high, along with a shallow external fosse to the east, a fosse being a defining ditch dug outside the bank to reinforce the enclosure boundary. That eastern ditch is now just over two metres wide and barely 20 centimetres deep, which gives a sense of how thoroughly time and tillage have worked against it. The interior surface is uneven and slopes gently downward toward the east.

The site sits on a slight rise within gently undulating pasture, and the recorded notes make a point of mentioning that it commands good views in all directions, which is entirely typical of ringfort placement; elevated ground offered both visibility and a degree of natural drainage for whatever structures once stood inside. Visitors approaching across open farmland should look for the subtle change in ground level rather than any obvious earthwork, since the surviving scarps are low enough to be easily missed. The slight unevenness of the interior, along with the faint trace of the eastern fosse, rewards careful attention at low sun angles, particularly in winter or early spring when vegetation is thin and raking light picks out shallow relief in a way that summer grass obscures entirely.