Whether that tradition preserves a genuine memory or simply reflects the human instinct to suppose something lies hidden underfoot is, for now, an open question. What is certain is that the site itself is a well-preserved example of a rath, an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century.

The fort sits on a north-facing slope at Ballycummisk, its interior a roughly circular space measuring 44 metres north to south and 42 metres east to west. It is enclosed by an earthen bank that reaches a maximum height of 3.25 metres, surviving best along the western to south-eastern arc. Outside that bank, a fosse, essentially a ditch, runs from the south around to the east, and the whole is partly bounded by a later field fence on the western and northern sides. A gap in the bank to the north-east, roughly 2.8 metres wide, likely marks an original entrance. Inside, cultivation ridges running on a north to south axis speak to later agricultural use of the enclosure, long after its defensive or domestic function had passed. Near the inner face of the northern bank, the outline of a small circular hut site, just 3 metres across, is still detectable, and that central stone mound measuring roughly 2 by 2.4 metres continues to invite speculation about what lies beneath it.

The site sits in pasture, which keeps the earthworks relatively legible at ground level. The bank, particularly along the western and south-eastern stretch, gives a genuine sense of the scale of effort these enclosures required, built without machinery, presumably to define, protect, and announce the boundaries of a family's world.