A rath, sometimes called a ringfort, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and ditch, and was the most common form of rural settlement in Ireland from roughly the sixth to the tenth century. What makes this particular example worth pausing over is not just the house itself but the unusual internal organisation of the enclosure that contains it.

The rath's north-western quadrant is separated from the rest of the enclosure by a curving internal bank, three to three and a half metres wide and standing up to nearly a metre high, which may once have been faced with large stones. Against the inner side of that bank, in the south-eastern portion of the space it carves out, sits the house, measuring roughly fourteen and a half metres east to west and five metres north to south. Its defining bank of earth and stone, about two and a half metres wide, survives to an internal height of around seventy centimetres, though the structure as a whole is considerably disturbed. Breaks in the bank, one midway along the northern side and two along the southern, suggest original entrance points, though it is difficult now to read which was primary. A second possible house lies approximately ten metres to the south-east, hinting that this corner of the rath may once have held a small cluster of domestic buildings rather than a single dwelling.