A ringfort, or rath, is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches thrown up around a central living area. At Beagh, the enclosure measures roughly 35 metres across and was once, according to local tradition, a fort with two such banks. Today, aside from a faint band of different vegetation betraying the outline of what once stood here, nothing visible survives above ground.

The site was recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps as a circular enclosure, which is how it entered the archaeological record. Local memory, though, held onto something the maps could not quite convey: that this was a fortified place of some significance, with multiple earthworks. Whether those banks were levelled by ploughing over centuries, or simply eroded into the surrounding land, is not documented. What remains is the conjunction of a cartographic trace, a patch of distinctive vegetation, and a piece of oral tradition pointing to something more substantial that once occupied this unremarkable hilltop.