Its raised platform measures roughly 35 metres north to south and 36 metres east to west, enclosed by an earthen bank standing about 1.5 metres high. On its northern side, a fosse, a defensive ditch dug to reinforce the bank, drops to around half a metre. Taken together, these dimensions place it firmly in the tradition of the rath, the most common type of ringfort found across Ireland.

Raths were the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically dating from somewhere between the sixth and tenth centuries, though some were built earlier or later. They were not military fortifications in any grand sense; they were homesteads, places where a farming family lived, kept livestock, and marked out their social standing through the act of enclosure itself. The earthen bank and fosse were practical deterrents against cattle raiders and predatory animals, but they also announced ownership and status in a society where such things mattered enormously. The choice of a drumlin, a smooth hill of glacial sediment, for this particular example would have offered good drainage and a degree of natural elevation, making the enclosure more visible and more defensible without requiring any dramatic engineering.