A rath is an earthen ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built in early medieval Ireland, typically between the sixth and tenth centuries, and thousands of them survive across the country in varying states of preservation. This one is quietly legible beneath its vegetation, a raised circular platform roughly twenty-two metres across, positioned on a terrace with the valley of the Drimminboy River opening out to the north.

The earthen bank that defines most of the circuit measures over six metres in width, and the difference in height between its inner and outer faces tells something of the effort involved in its construction. On the exterior, the bank rises to around two and a half metres; on the interior, the drop is considerably less, which is consistent with the internal ground level itself being raised, by as much as one and a half metres above the surrounding land on the northern side. A fosse, the external ditch that was typically dug to provide the material for the bank, survives along part of the perimeter, though it is shallow now, just half a metre at its deepest. Where a scarp rather than a built bank defines the northeastern section, the natural slope of the terrace may have done some of the defensive work. A break in the northeastern arc of the bank is the most likely location of the original entrance, the point where whoever lived here passed in and out of their enclosed world.