It is a deliberately chosen position, and the earthwork sitting on that ridge edge was placed there with exactly that awareness in mind. This is a rath, a type of ringfort that was the standard form of enclosed farmstead in early medieval Ireland, typically dated to somewhere between the sixth and tenth centuries. Built from earth rather than stone, raths defined a family's domestic space with one or more concentric banks and ditches, and this example in Raheen follows that pattern with quiet precision.

When the monument was formally described in 1977, it measured thirty-three metres in diameter, defined by an inner bank of earth and stone, an intervening fosse (a ditch cut between two banks), and a further outer bank beyond that. The entrance gap, two and a half metres wide, faces east-south-east, which is fairly typical for ringforts, many of which were oriented towards the rising sun. The inner bank sits on a steep counterscarp embankment along the northern arc of the site, where the natural slope of the ridge lends the structure extra height and drama. The fosse is best preserved along the eastern to western arc through the south, while the outer bank remains reasonably visible from the south-east around to the west. Modern field banks have been cut into the perimeter at the east, south-west, and west, disturbing the outer bank at those points. The interior slopes gently to the south, with slight undulations across the ground surface that hint at whatever activity once took place within.