The position is deliberate and quietly telling: whoever chose this spot wanted elevation, visibility, and perhaps the natural barrier of wet ground beyond the perimeter.

The structure is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a form of enclosed settlement that was widespread across the country during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. This particular example measures 44 metres in diameter and is defined by two earthen banks with a fosse between them, a fosse being a ditch, typically dug to provide material for the banks and to reinforce the sense of boundary. The double-bank arrangement is a slightly more elaborate form of construction than the single-bank ringforts that make up the majority of such sites, suggesting a degree of status or investment on the part of whoever commissioned it. The banks survive from the eastern arc around through south to west; on the northern side, the enclosure is defined instead by a natural scarp, where the ridge itself does the work that earthmoving would otherwise have done. The entrance, causewayed across what would have been a gap in the fosse, faces the north-north-west, directly towards that bogland panorama.