That impenetrability is part of what makes it worth knowing about. Local tradition gives this ringfort a name, Lisnamaoila, and a history that sets it apart from the general run of early medieval enclosures: it was used as a children's burial ground.

Ringforts, or raths, are circular enclosures defined by an earthen or stone bank and, sometimes, a surrounding ditch. They are among the most common monument types in Ireland, built mainly during the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, and typically serving as the enclosed farmsteads of individual families. The one at Lissatava measures about 34 metres north to south and is defined by a bank that is notably more substantial on its outer face than its inner, reaching an external height of around 1.7 to 1.8 metres at the north-west. A loose scattering of small stones runs along the bank's narrow, rounded top. At the south, a later east-west property wall has been built directly over the bank, partly obscuring what may have been the original entrance at the south-east, where the bank appears lower and less well preserved. There is also a small, shallow depression, two to three metres across, in the southern half of the interior, its edges soft and undefined.

The secondary use as a children's burial ground places Lisnamaoila within a tradition found across Ireland, where disused ringforts served as the burial sites for unbaptised infants, known in Irish as cilliní. Such burials were excluded from consecrated ground under historical Church practice, and liminal spaces, old enclosures in particular, became established alternatives. The combination of an ancient earthwork, a borrowed name carrying that usage, and a site now almost entirely reclaimed by vegetation gives this particular rath a quietly layered quality that its overgrown state does nothing to diminish.