A rath is a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built throughout Ireland roughly between the third and tenth centuries, consisting of a raised earthen bank and, often, an outer ditch known as a fosse. At Castletaylor, the bank survives in fair condition, measuring just over thirty-one metres in diameter, and a shallow entrance gap some three metres wide opens to the east, an orientation that appears frequently in Irish ringforts and may reflect practical or customary preferences of the period.

What distinguishes this particular example is a detail visible along the south-western arc of the bank: traces of stone-facing, suggesting that whoever built or later modified the enclosure reinforced the earthwork with masonry, lending it something of a hybrid character between a purely earthen rath and a stone-built cashel. The external fosse, which would originally have encircled the whole structure, is now only legible along the southern and western sides, the rest having presumably silted or settled into the surrounding ground over the centuries. The site was recorded by McCaffrey in 1952, appearing as entry number thirteen in what was then a systematic effort to catalogue such monuments across the county.