The weathered, silvery stone ruins scattered across the grassy, 158m-high Hill of Slane today include a foundational outline of a church, a round tower and a monastery associated with St Erc, and a later Norman motteandbailey on the hill's western side, built by Archembald Fleming, who came to Ireland with Henry II in 1171.
On the high point of the first, Edburton Hill, are the earthworks of a motte-and-bailey castle, which in spring and early summer are a knee-high wildflower meadow: agrimony, wild mignonette, red clover, yellow rattle, marjoram, scabious, knapweed and the odd tall bolt of fireweed, through all of which wander string-like stems of bindweed.