What makes it quietly interesting is precisely the way it has been absorbed into the working landscape rather than preserved apart from it: the earthen bank, which stands about 1.2 metres high and encloses a roughly circular area some 27.5 metres across, has been stone-faced on its southern and western sides and folded into the local field fence system, so that an ancient boundary and a modern one now occupy the same line of ground.

This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed settlement that was built and occupied predominantly during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Tens of thousands of them once existed across Ireland, and they served as farmsteads for families of varying social rank, the size and elaborateness of the enclosing bank giving some indication of the status of the occupants. The one on Crosshaven Hill is modest in scale but structurally coherent: the bank runs most clearly from south to north, with a lower rise continuing around the northern and south-eastern arcs. A field fence running north to south has cut across the eastern edge of the enclosure, truncating it in a way that is common to many such sites, where centuries of land division have left only a partial outline.