It is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that was the basic unit of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from somewhere between the sixth and tenth centuries. Thousands were once scattered across the country; many have since been levelled, absorbed into field systems, or simply forgotten. This one survives, after a fashion.

The enclosure measures roughly 34 metres east to west and 32 metres north to south, making it a modest but fairly typical example of the form. What once defined it was a combination of an earthen bank and an external fosse, a defensive ditch dug around the perimeter. Of the fosse, only the north-western stretch still reads clearly in the ground; elsewhere, time and use have done their work. From the east around to the south-east, the enclosing element takes the form of a scarp, a natural or cut slope rather than a built-up bank, which may reflect how the original builders took advantage of the hillside topography. The townland boundary runs directly over the southern arc of the enclosure, overlying the earthworks from the south-east through to the south-west, and a later field bank cuts across what remains at both the west and east sides. These intrusions tell a familiar story: as the rath fell out of use, the land around it was reorganised for farming, and the ancient boundaries were simply built over or ignored.