Set on a slight rise in low-lying pastureland, the site reads at first as little more than a worn earthwork, but beneath that ordinariness lies a small constellation of features that together sketch the outline of a once-functioning early medieval farmstead.

The rath itself, measuring roughly 60 metres east to west and 50 metres north to south, is poorly preserved, its defining bank eroded to the point where the enclosure's oval shape is easier to trace on a plan than to walk. A rath was a circular or oval earthen ringfort, typically enclosing a family homestead during the early medieval period, roughly 500 to 1000 AD, and thousands of them once dotted the Irish countryside. What makes Dartfield worth pausing over is the detail that survives within and beside that bank. In the northern sector of the interior, there is a possible house site, and just to its west a low, grass-covered stony mound about four metres in diameter, its purpose uncertain but plausibly connected to the same occupation. More significant still is the souterrain identified in the ENE sector. A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, typically associated with ringforts, and used variously for storage, refuge, or both. Their presence at a site is usually taken as a mark of some permanence and investment, a community bothering to dig and line a structure underground does not do so casually. Running along the outer edge of the bank, from the WNW around through north to the ENE, is a berm-like feature, a flat or gently sloping shelf of ground that would have sat between the main bank and any outer ditch, adding another layer of definition to the enclosure's boundary.