It is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, and roughly fifty thousand of them are thought to survive across Ireland in various states of preservation. What makes each one worth pausing over is the detail, and here the detail is legible enough to read almost like a plan.

The enclosure is very nearly circular, measuring 30.6 metres north to south and 30.8 metres east to west, which gives a sense of how carefully these structures were laid out. The defining feature on the south-east to east arc is an earthen bank still standing two metres high, a substantial presence in a field that otherwise rolls gently downhill. Elsewhere around the perimeter the bank gives way to a scarp, a steep natural or cut slope used to the same defensive effect with less effort. Outside the main enclosure, running from south-south-east to north, lies an external fosse, essentially a ditch dug to reinforce the barrier and now surviving to a depth of 0.6 metres. A counterscarp bank, the smaller ridge thrown up on the outer edge of that ditch, traces the arc from south-south-east around to the west and still rises half a metre above the surrounding ground. Ringforts of this kind were typically built during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and served as farmsteads for free farming families rather than military fortifications in any modern sense. The varying construction around the circuit, full bank in some places, scarp in others, suggests a builder working intelligently with the natural contours of the slope rather than imposing a uniform solution on the land.