It sits in a county layered with prehistoric and early medieval remains, part of a broader category of field enclosures that appear across the Irish landscape in considerable variety: some are the earthen banks of early farmsteads, some defined the boundary of a ráth or ringfort, and others served purposes that field survey alone cannot determine. What exactly defines this particular enclosure, its shape, its dimensions, its likely date, remains unknown from available sources.

The name Rathcash itself is suggestive. "Rath" in Irish placenames typically refers to a ringfort, the circular earthen enclosures that were the dominant form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Tens of thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation, from well-defined raised banks to faint crop-mark traces visible only from the air. Whether the enclosure at Rathcash relates directly to that placename, or whether the two are simply neighbours in the landscape, is a question the available material cannot answer.