The site is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was the standard form of enclosed rural settlement across Ireland from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Most were built to protect a farming family and their livestock, the enclosing bank and ditch serving as a deterrent to cattle raiders as much as to any military threat.

This particular example sits atop a hill at Ballykine, and whoever chose the location knew what they were doing. The western aspect offers a commanding view, which in an era before written land registers meant that visibility over the surrounding countryside carried both practical and social weight. The fort itself is a roughly circular raised area, measuring fifty metres across in both directions, enclosed by a low earthen bank just half a metre high. Outside the bank runs a fosse, a shallow external ditch, now only around forty centimetres deep, likely much reduced from its original depth through centuries of silting and erosion. The western section of the bank has been disturbed at some point, and the interior is heavily overgrown, which is not unusual for sites of this kind that have lain outside active farmland.