What looks like a slight swelling in the field is in fact a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead typically built during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. These earthwork enclosures were once the most common form of rural settlement across Ireland, and thousands survive in varying states of preservation. The example at Ardskeagh is a bivallate example, meaning it has not one but two concentric earthen banks, with a fosse, or defensive ditch, running between them.

The site measures roughly 31 metres east to west and 30.5 metres north to south, making it a reasonably substantial enclosure. The inner bank rises to about 1.6 metres on its outer face, while the outer bank, now heavily eroded, stands at around 0.8 metres. Between the two runs a fosse some 4.1 metres wide, which remains waterlogged along its northern and western stretches. The inner bank is broken to the south-east, where a muddy causeway once provided the original point of entry across the ditch. A berm, a flat ledge of ground, runs along the inner face of the outer bank from the north-east around to the east-south-east. What makes the wider landscape here particularly notable is the presence of a motte, a Norman-era earthen mound of the kind built as a fortified base during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, sitting only around 80 metres to the east. The proximity of the two monuments, one rooted in Gaelic settlement patterns and the other in the Norman reorganisation of the Irish countryside, gives this quiet corner of County Cork an unusual archaeological density.