A rath, as this type of earthwork enclosure is commonly called, was typically a circular area surrounded by one or more earthen banks and a fosse (a defensive ditch), used in early medieval Ireland as a farmstead or settlement. This one in Aghavaddy was, by any measure, a substantial example: a raised circular interior of roughly 38 metres in diameter, ringed by a bank and fosse solid enough to have impressed whoever recorded it.

A survey carried out by the Office of Public Works in 1974 documented the site in reasonable detail, describing the raised ground, the enclosing bank, and the fosse still legible in the field. At some point between that survey and more recent inspection, the site was levelled. The earthen bank was absorbed into the surrounding field boundary along its south-western to north-western arc, leaving that stretch indistinguishable from an ordinary field margin. Only along the eastern to southern side does any trace survive, and there only as a low scarp, a slight but readable drop in ground level that follows the old perimeter.

For anyone who does make their way to this part of Cavan, the experience is a quiet lesson in how quickly early medieval archaeology can disappear into agricultural land. The eastern scarp is the thing to look for, that faint change in gradient that was once the outer edge of a community's defended home.