Among its features is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, one of the most common yet persistently mysterious monument types in the Irish landscape. These roughly circular enclosures, defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, were the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, occupied roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands survive across the country, and yet each one sits in its own particular relationship with the land around it, shaped by local topography, soil, and the choices of the family who built and worked it.

The Burren itself provides an unusual backdrop for such a monument. This limestone karst landscape in north Clare is one of the most archaeologically dense areas in Ireland, its thin soils and exposed pavements having preserved earthworks, field systems, and enclosures that elsewhere were long ago ploughed away or built over. Ringforts in this region sometimes sit within or adjacent to older field boundaries, hinting at continuities of land use stretching back well before the early medieval period. The placename Noughaval derives from the Irish Naomhghabhail, sometimes interpreted as relating to a saint's holding or sanctuary, which points to the area's early ecclesiastical associations as well as its secular ones.

Because detailed survey information for this particular site has not yet been made publicly available, the specifics of its size, condition, and any recorded features remain difficult to pin down. What can be said is that visiting ringforts in the Burren generally rewards patience and a willingness to read the ground carefully. The banks of a rath, even a weathered one, tend to announce themselves as a subtle rise in an otherwise level field, and the interior, once you are inside the enclosure, has a quality of enclosure and quiet that is quite distinct from the surrounding landscape.