Known as a rath, this type of circular earthwork enclosure was a common form of early medieval settlement across Ireland, typically consisting of a raised bank and ditch enclosing a domestic area. Thousands survive in varying states of preservation, but this one in Moybella belongs to a smaller, quieter category: the ones that have been entirely absorbed back into the landscape.

The Ordnance Survey mapping of 1841 to 1842 recorded the enclosure clearly, situated immediately north of a cluster of houses. By the time a later edition of the map was produced, a building had been constructed into the southern edge of the rath, cutting into it. That intrusion was enough. Today, no surface trace remains of the original earthwork. C. Toal's North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995 by Brandon in association with the FÁS Training and Employment Authority, documented the site and its condition, and the progression from visible monument to invisible one is readable simply by comparing the two map editions.

There is nothing to see at Moybella now, which is itself a kind of historical fact worth sitting with. The rath was not dramatic in its disappearance; it went gradually, incrementally, one building at a time, in the ordinary course of land use. The OS maps remain the most honest record of what was there and what replaced it.