Lisheennafreaghoge, recorded on Ordnance Survey maps as far back as 1838 and again on the 1917 edition, marks the site of a rath, the kind of circular earthwork enclosure built in early medieval Ireland, typically for farmsteads or minor settlements. The rath is gone, levelled during land reclamation at some point after those maps were made, yet the ground still holds a faint memory of what was there: a slightly raised circular outline, roughly 24 metres across, defined by a broad, sloping undulation where a bank or scarp once stood.

The survival is precarious. The scarp is most legible on the western and north-western arc, where a single hawthorn bush marks the line, hawthorns being long associated with rath boundaries in the Irish landscape, whether through deliberate planting or simply the protection such spots were traditionally afforded. Elsewhere, shallow surface undulations at the south-west and north hint at a possible fosse, the defensive ditch that typically accompanied such enclosures, and perhaps an outer bank beyond it. The eastern side, where the undulation flattens out most noticeably, is the most likely location of the original entrance. The rath does not stand alone in the landscape: three other similar enclosures survive within 300 metres, suggesting this ridge was a focus of early settlement, overlooking Clooturnaun Lough to the north-west and with wide views extending to the south and south-west.