This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically serving as a farmstead enclosed by one or more earthen banks. What makes this particular example quietly curious is what it has lost: there is no fosse, the surrounding ditch that would ordinarily accompany the bank, visible at ground level, and the original entrance has been so thoroughly obscured that it can no longer be recognised at all.

The raised area measures roughly 29 metres north to south and 26 metres east to west, enclosed by an earthen scarp that still reaches an external height of around 1.6 metres at its best-preserved stretch, between the south-west and north-east. Elsewhere, the picture is less intact. Along the north-east to south-west arc, the scarped edge has been cut back and straightened, most likely the result of agricultural activity over the centuries, which has a way of tidying away the irregular curves that early enclosures tend to leave behind. The uneven quality of what survives gives the site an eroded, half-remembered quality, a shape in the ground that rewards a second look once you begin to read it.