It is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the type of enclosed farmstead that was the dominant form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, broadly from around the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Tens of thousands of them survive across the island in varying states of preservation, yet each one rewards close attention to its particular construction, and this one has details worth noting.

The enclosure measures forty-six metres in diameter, a respectable size, and its defences are a combination of forms. On the eastern to south-south-western arc, the boundary takes the shape of an earthen bank, rising to a maximum internal height of 1.7 metres, with an external fosse, or ditch, cut to a depth of 1.35 metres and accompanied by a low counterscarp bank on its outer edge. On the opposite arc, from the north-west to north-north-east, the ground itself drops away as a natural or partly modified scarp 1.6 metres high, which would have rendered additional digging unnecessary on that side. One of the more interesting details is that the bank is faced internally with stone to a height of 1.4 metres, giving the interior revetment a solidity beyond what earthwork alone would provide. The interior is not entirely level; it sits flat for roughly seven metres inside the southern bank, then slopes gently downward toward the north-west, suggesting the builders worked with the natural topography rather than against it. A stone field boundary now runs along the top of the scarp, a later addition that has partly colonised the older structure. The whole enclosure is clear enough from the air to appear as a distinct circular mark in aerial photography.