A rath is an early medieval enclosed settlement, typically a circular area of raised ground surrounded by an earthen bank and a fosse (a broad, shallow ditch), within which a farming family would have lived. This one in Corick was never entirely easy to read, even when surveyors could still get close to it.

When the Office of Public Works surveyed the site in 1969, the enclosure measured roughly 45 metres across internally. The earthen bank and fosse were only legible from certain angles, visible from the north-northwest through north to north-northeast, and again from the southwest through south to south-southeast. A modern laneway ran along the western and northwestern edge of the site, and whatever the original entrance may have looked like, it had already become unrecognisable by the time anyone thought to look for it. The interior had been further disrupted by a field boundary running north to south, splitting the enclosed area into two unequal portions. That survey from 1969 remains the primary account of the monument, because when researchers returned to look again, the site could not be located at all. The conifer plantation that had grown up around it had apparently swallowed it entirely.

The phrase "not located subsequently" in the archaeological record is its own kind of document, a quiet note that the landscape had simply closed over something. Ringforts are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, with tens of thousands recorded across the island, yet individual examples disappear regularly through forestry, agriculture, and simple neglect. This one in Corick sits somewhere beneath a canopy of conifers, its bank and fosse intact or degraded, visible to no one in particular.