The enclosure measures roughly 24 metres across, defined by an earthen bank still standing to about 1.4 metres in height, with sections of the bank retaining their original stone facing. A shallow fosse, the defensive ditch that once ran around the outside of such enclosures, survives to the west side. That the whole thing remains legible in the landscape at all, unbuilt over and largely intact, is itself worth remarking upon.

This is a rath, the most common type of early medieval settlement monument in Ireland. Raths were typically the enclosed farmsteads of farming families, built during the period roughly spanning the fifth to the twelfth centuries. The earthen bank, sometimes reinforced with stone as here, and the external fosse would have defined a boundary that was part practical barrier and part social statement, marking off a household's space from the surrounding land. Tens of thousands of these monuments once existed across Ireland; many have been levelled by ploughing or development over the centuries, which is part of what makes a relatively well-preserved example like this one at Pluckanes worth noting. The stone-facing visible in parts of the bank suggests the builders had access to local stone and were willing to use it to consolidate the earthwork, a detail that adds a small layer of specificity to an otherwise familiar monument type.