A ringfort, or rath, is an early medieval enclosed farmstead, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches forming a circular boundary, and thousands of them once punctuated the Irish countryside. This one at Pallas is largely gone; what survives is an arc of low scarp running roughly east-northeast to west-southwest for about 27 metres, the ghost of an enclosure that originally measured around 35 metres in diameter.

The site was still visible enough in 1842 to be recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of that year, depicted as a hachured circular enclosure, the standard cartographic shorthand for an earthwork. By the time Bowman noted the area in 1934, however, this fort was probably among three ringforts on neighbouring parcels of land that he recorded as levelled, on ground held at the time by John Linehan, Andrew O'Callaghan, and Joseph McCarthy. Levelling of this kind was usually the result of agricultural improvement, as circular earthen banks interfered with ploughing and offered little practical benefit to a working farm. The loss was gradual and ordinary rather than dramatic, which is perhaps what makes it easy to overlook.

What remains sits in pasture, and the scarp is subtle enough that a casual walker might miss it entirely. The position, though, still carries something of the original logic of the site: an elevated south-facing slope with a long view over the Blackwater valley, the kind of placement that early farmers chose deliberately for drainage, shelter, and visibility.