What gives this particular rath its quiet interest is the name that appears on the 1837 Ordnance Survey Fair Plan map: Graghanisagh Fort, a designation that has since slipped from common use, leaving the site nameless to most passers-by. A rath, broadly speaking, is an early medieval ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, once the most common form of rural settlement across Ireland. This one measures roughly 36 metres north to south and 33 metres east to west, an oval form modest in scale but clear enough in outline on those early nineteenth-century maps.

By the time surveyors returned for the revised 1913 Ordnance Survey edition, the monument was still legible, with field boundaries radiating outward from it at the north-east, south-west, and north, suggesting the enclosure had long shaped how the surrounding land was divided and farmed. Descriptions from 1965 and 1971 record a low platform defined by a steep scarp, the original bank having been worn down over centuries, with a wide U-shaped fosse, or ditch, still visible along portions of the eastern and northern arcs. An outer earthen bank survives intermittently, with a counterscarp at the south-west and a gap of over four metres where a more recent field boundary cuts across it. The southern side of the inner bank shows signs of disturbance, though this gap may preserve the line of an original entrance. Inside, the ground is uneven and partly colonised by thorn trees and briars, a characteristic that tends to preserve such monuments even as it obscures them. The surrounding field has more recently been planted with forestry, which changes the setting considerably from the open pasture recorded in earlier surveys.