What makes this particular ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead typical of early medieval Ireland, quietly unusual is the small D-shaped annexe attached to its northern side, a feature that suggests the enclosure served more complex purposes than simple domestic settlement.

A ringfort, or rath, typically consists of a circular bank and ditch enclosing a living area; this one is bivallate, meaning it has two concentric banks separated by a fosse, a term for the ditch or trench dug between them. The enclosure measures roughly 43 metres east to west and 32 metres north to south. When surveyors examined it in 1979, the inner bank of earth and stone was best preserved on the north-east arc, while the southern and western sections had been reduced to little more than a scarp. The outer bank and its fosse may be later additions rather than original construction. Inside the enclosure, the ground slopes towards the east and is uneven in the southern quadrant, where grass-covered mounds of field-clearance stones have accumulated over the centuries. Within the north-west quadrant, the remains of a hut site have been identified. The annexe adjoining the north side, measuring about 19 metres by 12 metres and enclosed by its own low bank, is separated from the main ringfort bank by a gap to the east; such annexes are thought to have served as stock enclosures or working areas associated with the main settlement. The site has a long cartographic record: it appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1837 and again on the revised twenty-five-inch edition of 1913, and a circular earthwork in what is likely the same location is visible on an estate map of Rathconrath drawn in 1776, now held in the National Library of Ireland.