This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built throughout Ireland during the early medieval period, typically between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Most were the homesteads of farming families, defined by one or more earthen banks and, where the ground was suitable, an external ditch known as a fosse. This particular example has no trace of such a fosse, and its bank has been worn, removed, and recut in so many places that reading it requires a degree of patience.

Surveyed in both 1975 and 1979, the monument was recorded as an irregular oval, measuring roughly 29 metres north to south and 26.5 metres east to west, defined by an earth and stone bank that survives best along the arc from south-west around to north-east. A well-defined gap on the eastern side may represent the original entrance to the enclosure. The interior slopes down towards the north-west, and the whole site is set on a prominent hill with extensive views westward, a positioning that would have made practical sense to whoever chose it. The 1913 Ordnance Survey 25-inch map already showed the site as a distinct scarp, and aerial photography confirms the oval outline, planted with trees in the manner common to ringforts that have survived into agricultural land by becoming, in effect, too awkward to plough.

What complicates the picture is the palimpsest of later land use written across the monument. An old field boundary running roughly north to south cuts across the southern portion of the bank and pushes into the interior, where it loops back to meet the enclosing bank on the east side. A secondary bank, positioned slightly off-centre to the west, appears to run beneath this later fence line, suggesting it predates the field reorganisation. Further modifications at the south-east have seen another fence extend outward from the enclosure. The result is a site where early medieval, post-medieval, and modern agricultural logic have all left their mark, layered one on top of another in the quiet Westmeath pasture.