This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that early medieval families built across the Irish countryside in their thousands. What makes this one quietly arresting is the precision of its survival: a flat-bottomed fosse, or defensive ditch, three metres wide runs around the platform, and beyond that an outer bank rises to 1.3 metres and stretches 3.5 metres across its top. Parts of the outer face of that bank are still clad in a battered stone wall, meaning the original builders finished the exterior with dressed or laid stone rather than leaving bare earth.

The site measures 34 metres across in both directions, making it a near-perfect circle, and the platform it forms stands 2.8 metres above the level ground around it. A low internal rise running from north to south-east marks the edge of the platform at its top. Where the outer bank eases away to the south-south-east and the slope becomes more gradual, there is a possible original entrance, marked not by a gap in the bank but by a stone-faced scarp, a cut or shaped slope of stone, suggesting the approach was deliberately managed rather than simply left open. Locally the site goes by the name Lissard, from the Irish lios, another word for a ringfort enclosure, combined with ard, meaning height or high place, a description that fits the raised platform exactly.

The interior is now planted with conifers, and the fosse and bank carry some lighter tree cover as well. That planting, while it obscures the ground surface, has also helped preserve the earthworks by keeping the area out of agricultural use. The stonework on the outer bank face, visible in places where it has not slipped or been absorbed into the bank, is worth looking for if you can get close to the outer circuit.