The name is a curiosity, one of many instances across Ireland where later generations projected a martial identity onto ringforts, or raths, that were in reality the enclosed homesteads of farmers. A rath is typically a circular area bounded by one or more earthen banks and ditches, used for settlement and livestock management rather than warfare, though the raised, defended perimeter could serve a protective purpose.

This particular rath sits on the summit of a drumlin ridge running northwest to southeast, the kind of low, whale-backed hill left across County Monaghan by retreating glaciers. The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring around 41 metres east to west and 39.5 metres north to south, and is still grass-covered. It has two concentric earthen banks separated by a fosse, that is, a ditch, with the outer bank largely removed along its northeastern to eastern arc. A causeway crossing the fosse at the north-northeast, about 2.6 metres wide at the top and half a metre high, would once have been the main approach through the entrance gaps in both banks. Inside the inner bank, on the western side, there is a natural rise in the ground, and cut across it runs a sunken depression roughly ten and a half metres long and four metres wide, with a shorter spur extending from its southwestern end toward the northwest. The measured regularity of this feature, along with its branching shape, has led to the suggestion that it may be a collapsed souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage sometimes built beneath raths for storage or refuge. The absence of any visible stonework leaves the question open.