A rath is a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and, typically, an outer ditch, built during the early medieval period in Ireland as a farmstead or place of habitation. What makes Rathcurneen quietly compelling is that the landscape itself seems to have conspired to preserve a degree of ambiguity about it, including where you would have walked in.

The enclosure measures approximately 27 metres across and appears on Ordnance Survey six-inch maps from both 1922 and 1938 under the name Rathcurneen, which suggests it was still a recognisable and named feature in living memory within those communities. The earthen bank survives best at the south and west, rising to an external height of around 1.7 metres on the western side, though its inner face is low and considerably degraded. Remnants of stone facing or a kerb are still visible in parts along the eastern interior, hinting at a more structured original construction than the eroded earthwork now suggests. A curving field bank running from south-southeast to northwest, sitting some two to two and a half metres outside the main enclosure bank, may preserve the line of an original outer fosse and bank, though no such external elements survive on the eastern half. Whether the gap in the bank at the west is a later break or the site of the original entrance is uncertain; a low section at the south-southwest is equally inconclusive.

A possible second enclosure lies roughly 200 metres to the southeast, which raises the prospect that this corner of Ballycarroon once held more structured activity than its present character of rough, wet grazing would suggest. The blackthorn that now engulfs the rath is both the site's most immediate obstacle and, in a way, its accidental guardian, making casual disturbance unlikely and lending the place a dense, overgrown quality that rewards patience and a careful eye for the ground underfoot.