A possible rath, the circular earthen enclosure once used in early medieval Ireland as a farmstead or family compound, still traces a rough ring across the pasture at Parkplace, its low bank of earth and stone running for most of its circumference. In the middle of it, occupying what would once have been the enclosed domestic space, sits a motte, the steep flat-topped mound built by Anglo-Norman settlers as the foundation for a timber castle. The combination is not unique in Ireland, but it is always quietly telling.

The rath itself measures approximately 65 metres in diameter, with a bank around 3.9 metres wide and just 0.6 metres high, modest dimensions even by the standards of a monument class that was never built to impress from a distance. At its outer base runs a waterlogged depression, between 5.3 and 8 metres wide and up to 0.75 metres deep, which would once have functioned as a fosse or external ditch. A significant stretch of the bank, from the north-north-east around through east to the south-south-east, has been lost to the construction of modern field boundaries, which speaks to the slow, undramatic way that many such sites are diminished over time. The motte occupying the interior suggests that when the Normans arrived and chose this location, they recognised something useful about it, perhaps its elevation, its existing prominence in the landscape, or simply the convenience of a pre-existing earthwork they could adapt to their own purposes.