The structure is a rath, the most common type of early medieval enclosure in Ireland, typically built as a defended farmstead by a farming family of some local standing. They were constructed from the earth dug out of a surrounding ditch, that ditch being thrown inward to form a bank, and the combination of bank and ditch, known as a fosse, created both a physical barrier and a marker of territory and status.

This particular example is subcircular in plan, measuring roughly 38 metres north to south and 35 metres east to west. Its defining features are a bank and an external fosse, and on the northern side there is a causewayed entrance gap just 1.4 metres wide, the original point of entry preserved in the earthwork. A causewayed entrance is simply a section of the fosse left uncut, forming a natural bridge of undisturbed ground across which people and animals could pass. At the north-east and south-east, a later field bank cuts across the rath, a reminder that agricultural activity in the centuries since has been indifferent to what lay beneath the soil. To the east of the enclosure, the fosse no longer reads as a clear depression but survives instead as a band of different vegetation, the kind of subtle trace that is easy to miss if you are not looking for it.