A rath is an enclosed farmstead of early medieval Ireland, typically defended by a circular bank and ditch, and the presence of two conjoined examples here, with a third lying roughly two hundred metres to the north, suggests this corner of County Mayo was a place of some local importance rather than a marginal or incidental settlement.

The rath in question sits on a low ridge with the Annagh Loughs to its south and south-west and the Mannin River to its east and south-east, a position that gives it natural water boundaries on two sides. The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring just over forty-seven metres north to south and just over fifty metres east to west. Its defining feature is a scarp, a low earthen edge between twenty and thirty centimetres high, which has been partly levelled over time but still retains a slight internal lip at its north-east and south-east. Outside the scarp runs a fosse, the formal ditch that would originally have reinforced the enclosure, now largely infilled on its eastern side. The fosse is notably narrow for most of its circuit, only about two metres wide, but it widens at the north-north-west, precisely at the point where it separates this rath from its conjoined neighbour. Whether that widening was a deliberate design choice, marking the boundary between two distinct enclosures, or simply the result of different phases of construction, is difficult to say from surface evidence alone. The interior is mostly level, grass-covered, with a gentle undulation near the south-east and a more pronounced slope down towards the south-west. A scattering of hawthorn bushes grows around the perimeter, as it does at so many Irish ringforts, their thorny habit offering a kind of accidental echo of the defensive function the earthworks once served.