What was once a rath, an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period typically surrounded by one or more earthen banks, now survives only as a scarp, a low-cut edge in the land where the original boundary once rose. The shape is still legible, roughly subcircular, measuring around 59 metres from northwest to southeast and 49 metres from northeast to southwest, which makes it a reasonably substantial example, though you would not know that from a casual glance across the field.

Raths were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, built and occupied roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. They housed farming families and their livestock, the enclosing bank offering a degree of protection and a clear territorial boundary. Thousands were once scattered across the Irish landscape, and Galway has its share, but many, like this one, have been reduced by centuries of agriculture and land use until only the ghost of a profile remains. Without the earthen bank that would have defined it more clearly, what survives at Lismanny is the faint negative impression of something that once organised daily life around it.