This is a rath, the Irish term for an earthen ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built throughout early medieval Ireland, broadly from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Thousands survive across the country in varying states, and this one in Rathcahill East is among those that have come through largely intact, which makes its dimensions all the more legible.

The site takes the form of a circular enclosure roughly sixty metres in diameter. An earthen bank defines the perimeter, rising about ninety centimetres on the interior side and considerably more, approximately 2.4 metres, when measured from the base of the external fosse. That fosse, the defensive ditch that rings the outside of the bank, is 3.4 metres wide and descends to around 1.35 metres in depth. At the western side, a gap of about 2.8 metres through the bank aligns with a causeway seven metres wide crossing the fosse, marking what would have been the original entrance. The interior is level and grassed over, offering little surface evidence of whatever structures once stood within. The record was compiled by Denis Power and uploaded to the national monuments database in August 2011.

The site sits in level dry pasture, which means the earthworks read clearly against the surrounding land rather than being obscured by slope or scrub. The bank and fosse are best appreciated by walking the outer perimeter, where the full external height of the bank becomes apparent and the fosse, even after centuries of silting and settling, remains a distinct feature underfoot. The western entrance and its causeway are the most architecturally telling elements on the ground. As with most sites of this kind in active farmland, access depends on the land being in use for grazing rather than tillage, and the usual courtesies of the countryside apply.