A rath, the most common type of ringfort found across Ireland, was originally a circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and external ditch, built to protect a family and their livestock during the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries. This one at Curragh has not worn well, but that partial survival is itself part of what makes it worth considering.

The monument measures approximately 36 metres in diameter. On the south-eastern to south-western arc, a low bank still traces the original line of enclosure, while elsewhere the boundary has been reduced to little more than a scarp, a slope in the ground where the bank has spread and settled over centuries. Between the south-west and north-west, a fosse, the defining ditch that once ran outside the bank, and a remnant outer bank can still be detected. Field walls, built at some later point in the agricultural history of the land, now encircle the site, layering one era of land management over another in the way that Irish fields so often do. The effect is a kind of palimpsest in earth and stone, where boundaries from very different centuries quietly overlap.