This layering of different eras of occupation onto a single piece of ground is not unusual in Irish archaeology, but it is always arresting to see how completely one era can obscure another.

A ringfort, or rath, is typically a circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, used as a farmstead or defended homestead during the early medieval period, broadly the fifth to twelfth centuries. The Belville example is a double-banked example, meaning it carried a degree of status or required a stronger boundary than the simplest single-bank sites. The interior is roughly 34 metres in diameter, enclosed first by an earthen bank about 4.8 metres wide, then an external fosse, a defensive ditch, ranging between 2 and 3.6 metres wide, and beyond that a second outer bank. On the eastern side, a gap of two to three metres, now largely choked by overgrowth, is thought to be the original entrance. On the southern arc, a low berm, a narrow flat shelf, sits inside the outer bank; this is likely the result of gradual erosion or some modification carried out in more recent centuries. The most significant damage lies on the north-western to northern side, where a vernacular cottage was constructed at some point, its builders levelling the fosse and outer bank and incorporating the inner bank into a field boundary. The cottage itself is now abandoned, leaving the site in a state that belongs fully to neither its medieval nor its modern phase.