This kind of unspoken negotiation between the ancient and the everyday is easy to miss, but it is one of the more telling signs that a site has held its ground for a very long time.

A rath, as ringforts of this earthen type are commonly called, was typically a circular or near-circular enclosure defined by a bank and ditch, used during the early medieval period in Ireland as a farmstead or a place of status. This one in Carrickacat is subcircular in plan, measuring roughly 49 metres north to south and 45 metres east to west. Its earthen bank survives to a reasonable height on the north-west arc, where it reaches about a metre externally, though on the southern side it has been worn down almost to a simple scarp. Just outside the bank, running from the north-east around to the south-east, there is a fosse, the term for the accompanying ditch, here evident only as a shallow surface depression a couple of metres wide, with a faint trace of an outer bank beyond it. A gap in the inner bank at the north-east may be an original entrance, though it is not possible to say so with certainty. Inside, the ground is gently uneven, rising slightly in the northern half, and in the north-east quadrant there is a shallow depression a few metres across, partly filled with loose small stones, the function of which is unclear.

The rath is hemmed in closely on three sides by modern field fences, one of which actually incorporates the northern arc of the bank into its line, while the eastern edge of the field is bounded by a road that follows the townland boundary. The interior remains under grass, and the perimeter has grown a dense ring of hazel, hawthorn, and brambles, giving the site a slightly self-contained, insular quality even in open farmland. The views from the rise are reasonable, most open to the south-east, which may have been part of the original calculation when someone, somewhere in the early medieval centuries, chose this particular ground to build on.