The wall does not know, and does not care, that it passes through a rath, an early medieval ringfort whose original circumference measured roughly 31 metres across. South of that wall, any trace of the monument has vanished entirely from the surface. What remains to the north and east is fragmentary: a low bank curving around the northeast, and a scarp running from the west-southwest back to meet it.

Raths are among the most common archaeological monument types in Ireland, thought to date largely from the early medieval period, roughly 500 to 1000 AD. They functioned as enclosed farmsteads, the earthen bank and sometimes an outer ditch defining a space for a household, its animals, and its small store of security. Most were modest in scale, home to a farming family of some local standing rather than any great lord. The one at Meenleana was never well preserved, even by the standards of such monuments, and the encroachment of agricultural boundaries over generations has reduced it further. The field wall that cuts through it speaks to a more recent and entirely practical reorganisation of the land, in which the old circular logic of the rath gave way to the straight lines of post-medieval land division.