The structure is a rath, the most common type of ringfort in Ireland, built as a defended enclosure, typically of earth and timber, to protect a farming household and its livestock during the early medieval period, roughly between 500 and 1000 AD. What makes this particular example quietly interesting is not its drama but its detail: two concentric banks with a fosse between them, a fosse being the ditch dug to supply the material for the banks themselves, arranged in a near-perfect subcircular plan measuring roughly 39 metres north to south and 37 metres east to west.

The earthworks have survived unevenly, as so many of these sites have across the Irish midlands and west. The fosse, the innermost of the defining features, can still be traced from the north-north-east around to the south-south-east and again from the south-west up to the north-north-west, meaning it survives through most of its circuit. The outer bank, however, is now only legible along the south-west to north-north-west stretch. This kind of partial survival is typical: centuries of agricultural activity tend to erode the outermost features first, leaving the inner banks and ditches to persist a little longer in the landscape. The overall condition is described as fair, which in archaeological terms means recognisable and structurally present, if worn.