That is, in its own way, a kind of distinction. The site at Derrygowna is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead typically built during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands of them survive across Ireland in varying states of preservation; this one has been reclaimed almost entirely by its surroundings.

The Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1837 shows it clearly enough, marked simply as "Fort" and depicted as a circular, tree-lined enclosure on the north-facing slope. By the time a field inspection was recorded in 1976, the physical remains consisted of a raised circular area approximately forty metres in diameter, defined by a bank of earth and stone. Ringforts of this kind were typically also surrounded by a fosse, a defensive ditch dug outside the enclosing bank, but no trace of one was found here. Nor was the original entrance point identifiable. What the 1976 report captures, then, is a site already well along the road to obscurity, its defining features softened or erased, its dense growth making any further reading of the ground unreliable.