The earthen bank still holds its shape across much of its circuit, yet the farm has carried on regardless, pressing field boundaries up against the enclosure on two sides and routing a slightly raised passage along the outer base of the bank. The fort has not been cleared or restored; it has simply been farmed around, which is in its own way a form of preservation.

A ringfort, or rath, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks, built predominantly during the early medieval period in Ireland, broadly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and used as a farmstead or place of habitation. This example at Riddlestown sits on a south-east-facing slope in pasture, and measures approximately 34 metres north to south and 36 metres east to west. The enclosing bank survives to an internal height of around one metre and an external height of 1.4 metres, with the best-preserved section running from the west-south-west to the east-north-east. Notably, the outer face of the bank retains a dry-stone revetment standing to about 0.8 metres, a detail that helps date and interpret the structure, and which closely resembles the stonework of the field boundary that meets the enclosure at the north-north-east. A gap of roughly 2.8 metres in the bank at the north-east likely marks the original entrance. The site was documented by Denis Power, with aerial photographs taken by the Archaeological Survey of Ireland in March 2006.

The interior slopes down toward the south-east and is currently thick with thistles, so sturdy footwear is advisable for anyone who wants to read the ground properly. The condition of the bank varies considerably as you move around the circuit; the south-western side is where field boundaries abut the enclosure most closely, and a heap of stones dumped against the outer face at the north-north-west obscures the bank somewhat in that section. The dry-stone facing is the detail worth pausing over, particularly on the better-preserved western arc, where the relationship between the ancient revetment and the later field wall alongside it raises quiet questions about how farmers across many centuries have made use of what was already there.