A rath, as these early medieval enclosures are known, was typically a circular earthen bank enclosing a farmstead or settlement, and thousands survive across Ireland in varying states of preservation. This one, however, is no longer visible at ground level. You could stand on top of it and not know it was there.

What we do know about this enclosure comes largely from cartographic evidence. It appears on Ordnance Survey six-inch maps from both 1846 and 1894, recorded as a circular enclosure roughly 40 metres in diameter. That it was already mapped so precisely in the nineteenth century suggests it was at least partially legible in the landscape at that time. Since then, the site has been absorbed into agricultural pasture on a north-east-facing slope, the earthworks either ploughed down or eroded to the point where nothing breaks the surface. The valley of the Glanooragh River still lies below, much as it would have when the enclosure was in use, but the structure itself has retreated entirely beneath the turf.