The bank that defines it rises to 2.6 metres and encloses a roughly circular area some 30 metres across, dimensions that are modest by some standards but more than sufficient to make the thing feel deliberate and purposeful once you are standing beside it.

A rath is an earthen ringfort, the most common type of archaeological monument in Ireland, typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly the sixth to tenth centuries. They served as enclosed farmsteads, the bank and whatever fence or hedge topped it providing a degree of security for livestock and family. Thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation, some reduced to faint crop marks, others still standing to a considerable height. The Ballygirriha example retains enough of its bank to read clearly as a coherent structure in the landscape. One detail that complicates its present condition is a set of depressions in the north-eastern quadrant, which the landowner attributes to relatively recent digging at the surface. What was being sought, or found, is not recorded, but the disturbance is a reminder that these monuments remain vulnerable long after the communities that built them have gone.