It is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built and used primarily during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Tens of thousands of them survive across Ireland, yet each one retains something individual, and this example in the townland of Desert is no exception.

The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring approximately 40.5 metres north to south and 43.5 metres east to west. It is defined by an earthen bank standing around 1.8 metres high, with a shallow external fosse, the ditch dug around the outside of the bank, the spoil from which would originally have added to the bank's height. Two gaps interrupt the circuit: one to the south, about six metres wide, and a narrower one to the west-southwest, roughly two metres across. Whether these represent original entrances, later breaches, or a combination of the two is not recorded, though a single formal entrance facing a specific direction was typical of ringfort design, and the southern gap is wide enough to have served that purpose comfortably.