It is only when you know what you are looking at that the shape begins to resolve into something deliberate, something very old. This is a rath, the most common type of early medieval enclosure in Ireland, typically consisting of an earthen bank and an outer ditch, or fosse, thrown up around a farmstead or dwelling. Thousands survive across the country in various states, and their very ordinariness is part of what makes them worth attention.

This particular example sits on a gentle rise with open views across the landscape to the east, south, and west, though the ground to the north limits the prospect in that direction. A practical choice, suggesting whoever chose the site had an eye for both surveillance and shelter. The enclosure measures roughly 36 metres north to south and 31.7 metres east to west, making it a modest but respectable oval. When observers recorded it in 1971 and again in 1976, the earthen bank was already low and the external fosse shallow, surviving most clearly at the south and north-north-west. A field boundary running roughly north-north-east to south-south-west has since cut across the west-north-west sector, truncating the bank and erasing whatever continuity it once had along that arc. The original entrance, which in a well-preserved rath might appear as a gap or causeway across the fosse, is no longer identifiable. The interior itself is slightly uneven underfoot but offers nothing visible to the eye.