It is a rath, the Irish word for a type of ringfort, an enclosed homestead of the early medieval period typically formed by one or more earthen banks and ditches. This particular example survives as a scarp, a sloped rather than vertical edge of raised earth, running around a roughly circular area of approximately 28 metres north to south and 30 metres east to west. The bank stands about 1.2 metres high, modest enough to overlook but substantial enough to mark out the boundary of what was once, most likely, a farmstead occupied somewhere between the fifth and twelfth centuries.

Ringforts are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, with tens of thousands recorded across the country, yet each one represents the enclosed world of a single farming household or small community. This one at Aghaville has not escaped the pressures that have diminished so many of its counterparts. Tree roots have worked into the interior, and field clearance stone has been dumped inside the enclosure, the kind of slow, practical damage that accumulates when an old earthwork sits in the corner of a working field. The surrounding field fences have been levelled, which has further altered the immediate landscape and removed natural boundaries that might once have given the site more definition within its setting.