They are easy to overlook, reduced now to low banks and shallow platforms, but their arrangement tells a reasonably coherent story about how people once organised domestic and working space within a defended enclosure.

The buildings sit inside a ringwork, a type of medieval fortification that, rather than relying on a stone castle or a raised motte, used a circular or oval earthen bank and ditch to define a defensible space. At Rathealy, the principal building is a long, narrow structure measuring roughly 12 metres on its longer axis and just under 5 metres wide, positioned in the south-eastern part of the enclosure interior and aligned north-east to south-west. Its southern wall is not a freestanding feature but is formed by the inner bank of the ringwork itself, the boundary of the enclosure doing double duty as the wall of the building. Elsewhere in the interior, a probable rectangular house occupies the western quadrant, with a further building set at right angles to it to the north and another to the south. The resulting cluster suggests something more than a single structure; this was a small complex of spaces, each likely serving a different purpose within the daily life of whoever occupied the ringwork.

The buildings survive only as earthworks, their walls expressed as banks no more than 20 to 45 centimetres high, yet the ground plan is legible enough to convey the spatial logic of the original layout. The site sits within reclaimed grassland, which has preserved the earthworks while also making them blend into the surrounding terrain.