The monument is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly 500 to 1200 AD, when such earthen enclosures served as the basic unit of rural settlement across Ireland. This particular example is substantial, measuring roughly 46 metres north to south and 48 metres east to west, and its elevated position on the ridge means it once commanded clear views in every direction, with a stream running about 70 metres to the north and the River Brosna lying some 430 metres to the west.

By the time the Ordnance Survey mapped the area in 1837, the ringfort was already a feature of the managed landscape, depicted as a circular enclosure with tree planting around its edges, suggesting it had been absorbed into the ornamental grounds of a nearby estate. The picture had changed somewhat by 1911, when a revised survey showed that the northern perimeter had been cut into by landscaping associated with Mount Lynn House, which stood about 40 metres to the north-north-east. Field boundaries and a pavilion had also encroached on the eastern and southern edges during the same period. Lynn House itself lies around 145 metres to the south-south-east. What survives today is a low earthen bank, largely worn down to a scarp, with a wide flat-bottomed fosse, the ditch that originally ran outside the bank, and traces of an external bank that are most legible when approached from the south-west or west-north-west. No original entrance feature remains visible, and the interior ground rises noticeably towards the centre, reflecting the natural contour of the hillock on which the whole structure was built.