What looks at first glance like a wooded copse is in fact a rath, one of the thousands of circular earthwork enclosures built across Ireland during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Most were farmsteads, the defended homesteads of farming families who raised a bank of earth around their dwelling and dug a ditch, known as a fosse, just outside it for added security and status.

This particular example measures about 34 metres across its east-west axis, making it a fairly typical specimen in terms of scale. The earthen bank survives to an internal height of around 0.7 metres and an external height of 0.85 metres, with the external fosse dropping to a depth of 0.85 metres. Those are modest figures by the standards of the more elaborate ringforts, but the basic geometry of the enclosure remains legible on the ground. The bank has been colonised over time by deciduous trees, which now grow thickly along its circuit, and the fosse has partially silted and filled in along the north-eastern to south-eastern arc. The site sits within what was the parkland of Assolas, suggesting it was absorbed into a later estate landscape without being levelled, a fate that destroyed many comparable earthworks elsewhere in the county.