This particular example is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was typically a circular earthen enclosure used as a farmstead and defended residence during the early medieval period, roughly 500 to 1000 AD. The trees now growing inside it have, over time, helped both to preserve and to obscure what lies beneath.

The site is a subcircular rath measuring approximately 35 metres east to west and 30 metres north to south. What defines it is a degraded bank, the original upcast earth that once formed a solid boundary wall, and an external fosse, which is simply a ditch dug around the outside to reinforce the enclosure's defences. That fosse survives, in varying states of preservation, along the southwestern, northern, and southeastern arcs of the perimeter. The structure sits around 120 metres southwest of a separate enclosure, and a second ringfort lies roughly 200 metres to the southeast, suggesting that this part of Galway once supported a cluster of neighbouring farmsteads, each enclosed and self-contained, within relatively close proximity of one another.