To a passing eye it might read as a slight rise in the field, but the geometry is deliberate and old. This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common type of early medieval settlement monument in Ireland. Thousands survive across the country, typically dating from roughly 500 to 1000 AD, and most were farmsteads rather than forts, the enclosing bank serving to mark territory and contain livestock as much as to defend against attack.

This particular example sits at the top of a ridge with open views in every direction, a position that would have suited a family of some local standing, able to survey the surrounding ground from their elevated enclosure. The bank itself survives to a height of about 0.95 metres and a width of 3.5 metres. In the north-east, a gap of just over a metre interrupts the bank, with stones still visible at the edges; this may well be the original entrance, which in ringforts was often positioned to face the rising sun or to allow the best approach from the surrounding farmland. Unlike many comparable sites, there appears to be no ditch, the external trench that commonly accompanies such banks. Whether one was never dug here or has simply silted and levelled beyond detection is unclear. The western portion of the bank has been lost entirely, removed at some point when a field boundary was constructed across the site, a fate that has befallen a great many ringforts as agricultural patterns shifted over the centuries.