The fact that it is still readable at all is what makes it quietly remarkable. One side of its enclosing bank and ditch survives in reasonable definition; the rest has been worn so faint by agriculture and time that it takes a moment to separate it from the surrounding ground.

This is a rath, the commonest type of early medieval Irish settlement, typically consisting of a circular earthen bank and an outer ditch, or fosse, enclosing a domestic space where a family and their livestock would have lived. At Poles, the interior measures roughly 35.5 metres from west-northwest to east-southeast and 34 metres from north-northeast to south-southwest, making it a fairly typical example of the form. The fosse, which would once have reinforced the bank as both a drainage feature and a boundary, is partly waterlogged in places and best preserved along the northern and eastern arc. A modern field boundary has cut into the southern side, compressing the original geometry still further. What has survived most clearly, though, is a break in the bank on the east-northeast side, accompanied by the remains of a causeway crossing the fosse, which represents the original entrance to the enclosure. That a deliberate threshold, laid down perhaps in the early centuries of the first millennium, is still legible in the land says something about how slowly these earthworks disappear when left largely alone.