It is, in fact, a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was typically a circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, used as a farmstead or place of settlement during the early medieval period. What makes this one in Darrery worth a second look is the way the landscape has grown around and through it, each incursion leaving a legible mark on a structure that was already old when the farm beside it was first laid out.

The ringfort is roughly circular, measuring 36.4 metres north to south and 35.6 metres east to west. Its boundary is formed by a scarped edge, essentially a cut or shaped slope in the earth, rising to about 0.65 metres in height and around 1.2 metres wide. Outside this runs a fosse, a shallow external ditch, 0.4 metres deep and 2.2 metres wide, which survives along the eastern to west-southwest arc. That surviving section tells only part of the story, however, because the fosse has been interrupted twice over by later activity. An avenue leading to a nearby farmhouse cuts across the west-southwest to northwest section, and a field boundary has removed the remainder from northwest around to the east. These are not acts of deliberate destruction so much as the ordinary, accumulative logic of a farm being worked across centuries, with older features absorbed or redirected as convenience demanded. Denis Power compiled the record of the site, which was uploaded in August 2011.

The interior of the enclosure is level and under pasture, offering little to see at ground level. The eastern to southeastern portion of the fosse is covered by dense overgrowth, which both obscures and, in a practical sense, preserves it. A visitor approaching across the marshy ground would benefit from doing so in drier months when the going is firmer underfoot. The surviving scarped edge is most easily read from outside the enclosure, looking inward across the ditch where it remains open. The farmhouse avenue that bisects the northwest arc is itself a useful orientation point, giving a clear sense of how the original circuit once ran and where it has since been interrupted.