Fewer know that sitting in the gently undulating grassland of the area is a ringfort of some complexity, a structure that predates the Claddagh's maritime identity by many centuries and quietly complicates any simple reading of the landscape.

The monument is a subcircular rath, measuring roughly 46 metres north to south and 41.5 metres east to west. A rath is an earthen ringfort, typically dating from the early medieval period, between roughly 500 and 1200 AD, and used as a defended farmstead enclosure. This one is defined by two banks with an intervening fosse, the fosse being a ditch dug between the banks to heighten the defensive effect. The inner bank survives well along much of the circuit, from the east through south to northwest, though elsewhere the enclosure is formed by a natural or cut scarp rather than a built-up bank. The outer bank retains traces of stone-facing, suggesting some care in its original construction. A field wall, added at some later and unknown date, cuts across the monument at two points, northeast and southwest, as agriculture gradually worked around and eventually into the old enclosure. The entrance is well defined on the eastern side. Within the interior, two further features have been identified: a probable souterrain, which is an underground stone-lined passage associated with early medieval settlements and thought to have served for storage or refuge, and a second feature recorded separately in the county inventory.