What remains is a subcircular rath, measuring roughly 34 metres north to south and 32 metres east to west, its defining bank worn down to the point where it barely interrupts the surrounding pasture. That it is still visible at all is, in its quiet way, remarkable.

A rath is a ringfort, the most common type of early medieval settlement in Ireland, typically built between around 500 and 1000 AD. They were enclosed farmsteads, the bank and sometimes an accompanying ditch marking the boundary of a family's living space and livestock enclosure. Thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation, though many have been lost entirely to agriculture and development. The example at Ussey falls towards the more fragmentary end of that spectrum, its subcircular shape still legible but its details largely gone. No internal features are recorded, and the bank itself is the sole surviving evidence that someone once chose this particular slope, with its eastward aspect and whatever view or shelter that offered, as a place to build and live.