The irises colonise the north side of the interior, the centre of the enclosure, and the fosse to the north-east, east, and south, and their presence almost certainly signals persistent waterlogging beneath the surface. The ground is holding water in the same places it has always held it, shaped by earthworks that are well over a thousand years old.

A rath, as this type of monument is also known, is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically defined by one or more earthen banks with an outer ditch, or fosse, running around the perimeter. This example sits in level pasture and forms a near-circular area of roughly 38.6 metres east to west and 36 metres north to south. The defining bank is most pronounced on the south-west to north-east arc, where it rises to about 1.8 metres on the outside face and 0.6 metres on the interior; on the opposite arc, from north-east to south-south-west, it survives only as a low rise of around 0.35 metres. The external fosse on the south-west to north-east side is waterlogged, while a shallower fosse, roughly 0.25 metres deep, persists around the rest of the circuit. A gap has been worn through the bank to the north-west, almost certainly from centuries of livestock passing through rather than any original entrance. What survives is modest in height but coherent in plan, and the asymmetry of the bank, taller on one side, lower on the other, gives a sense of how earthworks erode unevenly across a working agricultural landscape over many centuries.