Most raths in Ireland sit alone in a field, the remnant of a single early medieval farmstead, so finding a near neighbour so close by raises quiet questions about how this corner of north Galway was once organised and occupied.

The example at Marley is a subcircular rath, measuring approximately 49 metres north to south and nearly 44 metres east to west. A rath, in basic terms, is a roughly circular earthen enclosure, typically dating from the early medieval period, defined by a raised bank and a surrounding ditch known as a fosse. Here, the bank survives most clearly along the northern arc, from the north-west through to the north-east, and there is a further surviving stretch at the south-west. Elsewhere, the enclosure is marked only by a scarp, a low slope in the ground where the bank has long since eroded away. The fosse that once ran outside the bank has disappeared almost entirely along the western and north-western side. An entrance gap is still visible at the south-east, the most common placement for rath entrances, and field walls have been built around the monument over the centuries, incorporating it quietly into the working landscape. The overall state of preservation is poor, which is common for sites that have sat in farmed land for over a thousand years, subject to ploughing, grazing, and the gradual creep of boundary walls.