This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the type of enclosed farmstead that once dotted the landscape in extraordinary numbers during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Most were the homes of farming families, defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches rather than stone walls, and this one near Stripe follows that familiar template while keeping its details well guarded by vegetation.

The site measures approximately 23.6 metres across on its longer axis, oriented roughly north-northwest to south-southeast along the rise on which it sits. An earthen bank survives most clearly along the eastern and southern arc, where it still stands about 1.1 metres above the surrounding ground on the outside. A fosse, the ditch dug to provide material for the bank, runs alongside it at the southeast, roughly 2.5 metres wide. Beyond that sits an external stony bank, lower and more fragmentary, traceable at the northwest and southeast but obscured elsewhere by overgrowth, and possibly partly levelled at the northeast. The interior slopes downward from its centre toward the northeast and east, and a shallow depression of three to four metres can be made out in the southwest quadrant beneath the ferns and brambles. There may also be a slight internal scarp dividing the northeast quadrant from the rest of the interior, though the vegetation made it impossible to confirm this with any certainty. The whole site is overlooked immediately to the east by a higher rise, which would have made the enclosure somewhat less commanding than ringforts that occupy more prominent ground.