A ringfort, or rath, is a circular or oval enclosed settlement typical of early medieval Ireland, usually defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches and used as a farmstead between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries. This one has been levelled so thoroughly that what remains is a cropmark, the kind of trace that appears when buried earthworks alter the moisture and nutrient content of soil above them, causing the crops or grass growing over them to colour or ripen slightly differently to their surroundings.

The monument was recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1837, where it appears as an oval shaped earthwork, suggesting it was still physically present, or at least partially so, at the time of that survey. By November 2011, when a Digital Globe aerial photograph was examined, even that outline had become barely visible, reduced to a cropmark in the soil. The gap between those two moments, from a mappable earthwork to a near-invisible trace, captures something of how quietly these sites disappear from the landscape, worn down by centuries of agriculture with no dramatic event to mark their passing.