A rath, sometimes called a ringfort, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and ditch, and was the standard form of rural settlement in Ireland from roughly the sixth to the twelfth centuries. What makes this particular example of interest is not the enclosure itself but what sits within it: a two-roomed rectangular structure built against the northwestern bank, its walls and entrance still legible after more than a thousand years.

The house measures around 13.5 metres along its longer axis and just over five metres at its widest, which is a modest but workable domestic footprint. It is divided into two unequal rooms. The larger northwestern room retains the footings of a drystone wall, built without mortar, running to about half a metre in height and over a metre in width. Midway along the southwestern wall, a gap of roughly 1.5 metres flanked by two jamb stones marks where the original doorway stood. The smaller southwestern room, measuring around 4.5 by 3.3 metres, is defined not by stone footings but by a low bank of earth and stone, suggesting a different phase or method of construction. Curiously, no visible break survives in the dividing wall between the two rooms, which leaves open the question of how, or whether, the occupants moved between them.