The vegetation follows the line of an earthen bank, the kind of enclosure known as a rath, built during the early medieval period as a defended farmstead or family compound. What gives this particular example a quiet interest is the unevenness of its survival: the surrounding fosse, a water-filled or dry defensive ditch dug to reinforce the bank, has been partially filled in on its south-western side, yet along the northern and eastern stretches it has actually been deepened at some point, leaving a narrow berm, a thin shelf of ground, between the inner bank and the outer ditch.

The ringfort measures roughly 33 metres across from east to west, and the earthen bank, though only about a metre high, remains largely intact despite several gaps where the ground has been disturbed over the centuries. Inside, the terrain is not level; it slopes from north-west down to south-east, and faint traces of cultivation ridges run across it in a roughly north-north-east to west-south-west direction, suggesting the interior was put to agricultural use at some stage, quite possibly long after the original settlement had been abandoned. A post-1700 field boundary cuts across the southern part of the site, a reminder that later farmers divided up the landscape with little ceremony, drawing their hedgerows and ditches wherever the ground suited them. A second ringfort lies approximately 140 metres to the south-east, which raises the possibility that this part of Westmeath was once more densely settled than the present pattern of fields and pasture would suggest.