Look more carefully, though, and the outline of an ancient enclosure begins to emerge from the contours, where earthwork and topography have long since grown difficult to separate.

The site is an oval rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead typically built between the early medieval period and around the twelfth century, when they were the most common form of rural settlement across Ireland. This particular example measures roughly 38 metres on its northwest to southeast axis and 26 metres across, and what survives of it is only partially legible. A bank runs from the southern side westward and around to the north, but elsewhere the enclosing element is a tree-lined scarp, where the ground simply drops away rather than presenting a constructed earthen wall. The combination of surviving bank and natural or eroded scarp suggests a structure that has been softened considerably over centuries by weather, vegetation, and time. A probable souterrain is also associated with the site, a souterrain being an underground stone-lined passage or chamber that typically served early medieval communities for storage or, in some interpretations, as a place of refuge. The rath was noted by Neary in 1914, placing it within a long tradition of antiquarian interest in Galway's earthwork archaeology, though the description has not substantially changed in the century since.