A second fence cuts across its north-eastern edge. Between the fencing and a dense growth of blackthorn that has swallowed the eastern half almost entirely, the rath, as this type of earthwork enclosure is known, has been reduced to fragments of its former self.

Raths were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically used as enclosed farmsteads between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries. They were defined by one or more earthen banks, often accompanied by an outer ditch, known as a fosse, from which the upcast soil was piled inward to form the bank. At Cabragh, a short section of that original bank still survives at the north-west, and a ditch runs along the south to north-west arc, between 0.6 metres deep and varying in width from around four to six metres. The complication here is that the perimeter on that same arc has also been partly quarried away at some point, and it is not entirely clear where the original fosse ends and the damage from quarrying begins. The ditch may preserve something genuine, or it may be largely the by-product of later extraction, or some combination of both. That ambiguity gives the site an extra layer of quiet interest, the landscape offering no easy answer about its own past.