That possibility, unresolved and quietly persistent, is part of what makes the site worth attention. Most of what once framed daily life inside has long since gone, but the physical form of the enclosure survives well enough to read.

The monument sits on a west-facing slope in low-lying grassland at Castlequarter, and takes the form of a circular rath, a type of enclosed farmstead typically associated with early medieval Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Raths were usually built by farming families of some local standing, the enclosing banks and ditches serving as much for the management of livestock as for defence. This one measures approximately 31 metres in diameter and is defined by two stone-faced earthen banks with a fosse, or ditch, running between them. The double-bank arrangement suggests a degree of investment beyond the most basic enclosures. Overgrowth has obscured the outer bank along its southern and western arc, and from the west around to the north no surface trace of it remains visible at all. Field walls built at some later point now wrap around the monument from the west through to the north-east, adding another layer of agricultural history over the earlier one.