A rath, to use the Irish term, was a circular enclosure typically defined by an earthen bank and ditch, used as a farmstead or settlement during the early medieval period. The Motabower example was recorded by Kinahan sometime between 1879 and 1888, who noted a low circular feature on the site and suggested it was probably a rath on the basis of an underground chamber, or souterrain, said to have been discovered there. Souterrains, which are stone-lined underground passages or chambers built in association with raths, were used for storage and possibly refuge, and their presence is often taken as strong evidence of a ringfort nearby. The location was marked on a fieldmap of the Geological Survey of Ireland, which is how the general position has been preserved, but by the time the site was formally assessed, a house had already been built over it.

There is little here for a visitor to see. The site is not accessible, and the earthwork itself appears to have been destroyed. What remains is really just the idea of the place, a small vanished farmstead that probably dates back over a thousand years, noted once by a geologist passing through, and now remembered mainly because someone thought to write it down.