The oval earthwork at Eskerballycahill is what survives of a rath, a ringfort of the kind that was once the standard unit of rural settlement across early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a farmstead and its inhabitants within a raised bank and ditch. Thousands were built between roughly the sixth and twelfth centuries, and they remain among the most common archaeological monuments on the island. This particular example, however, has not fared especially well.

The rath measures approximately 36 metres north to south and 28 metres east to west, making it a modest but not unusually small example. A bank survives at the southern side, while the remainder of the enclosure is indicated by a scarp, a low slope or edge in the ground where the original earthwork has eroded or been disturbed over time. More damaging still, quarrying has eaten into the monument at its north-western edge, removing whatever once stood there and leaving the site further diminished. What remains is enough to read the shape of the place, the deliberate choice of slightly elevated ground, the careful oval form, but not enough to reconstruct it in any detail.