It is the kind of thing that can slip past a driver in a moment, registering only as a grassy mound before the road straightens and the view moves on. But the dimensions tell a different story: a bank six metres wide at its base, carefully constructed, and still standing close to its original height after well over a thousand years.

This is a univallate rath, meaning it has a single enclosing bank rather than the double or triple rings found at more elaborate sites. Raths of this type were the standard settlement form of early medieval Ireland, used roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and tens of thousands once dotted the landscape. They functioned primarily as enclosed farmsteads, the earthen bank offering a degree of security for livestock and household alike. The Drommartin example is on the smaller side of average, though its bank is unusually well preserved, rising to a maximum of 2.8 metres above the surrounding ground while sitting only about 1.6 metres above the interior floor, which gives a sense of how the original builders shaped the earth both outward and upward. A quarry sits roughly eighteen metres to the north-east, close enough to raise quiet questions about whether stone extracted there was ever used in the vicinity of the rath, or whether the proximity is simply coincidental.