A low, circular rise, just twenty-eight metres across in both directions, is almost all that remains of what was once a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead that was the dominant form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland. Thousands of these sites survive across the country, but many have been reduced, as this one has, to little more than a slight swelling in the earth, legible only if you know what you are looking for.

Ringforts were typically built between roughly the sixth and tenth centuries, functioning as farmsteads for a single family and their livestock, enclosed by one or more banks and ditches for both defence and status. The rath at Cloheen barony sits on a gentle north-facing slope, and the fact that it sits in tillage land is significant. Ploughing over centuries is one of the primary reasons so many of these sites have been reduced to their present condition, the original earthen banks gradually spread and flattened by repeated cultivation until only the faintest profile survives at ground level.