When the Galey River was widened and deepened, the rubble from that drainage work was dumped directly into the interior of this early medieval enclosure, obliterating its northern sector entirely. What was once a complete circular earthwork, roughly 34 metres across from east to west, has been reduced to a semi-circular arc of earthen bank sitting quietly above the Kerry lowlands.

A rath, as ringforts of this earthen type are generally known, would typically have enclosed a farmstead during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. The surviving bank here ranges between 1.8 and 4.4 metres wide at the base and rises to 1.2 metres above the surrounding ground at its highest point. Very faint traces of an exterior fosse, a shallow defensive ditch, can still be made out to the north-east, about two metres wide and less than half a metre deep. The interior sits at a slightly elevated level relative to the land around it. More intriguing still is a feature recorded in the western sector: a semi-circular rise, roughly 4.4 by 4 metres and about half a metre high, with a depression at its centre some 2.9 metres in diameter and 0.3 metres deep. This configuration is consistent with a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber that would have been used for storage or, in times of danger, as a place of concealment. Whether that subterranean feature survived the river works intact is another matter.