This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead that was the standard unit of rural settlement across early medieval Ireland, roughly from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Thousands survive across the island in varying states of preservation, but each one marks a spot where a family once lived, farmed, and understood the landscape in ways that have largely dissolved from the record.

The Drumanespick example measures some 31 metres in internal diameter, making it a reasonably substantial example of the type. It is defined by an earthen bank and a narrow fosse, which is the ditch dug just outside the bank, the material from which would originally have been piled up to form the enclosure itself. The bank has suffered considerable erosion along its eastern side, where it is described as much denuded, and whatever gap once served as the original entrance can no longer be identified with confidence. The overgrowth that now covers the site, while obscuring the structure, has in some respects also protected it from further disturbance.