Drumrath, in Co. Cavan, carries the Irish word rath embedded in it, referring to the type of earthwork that defines the place. A rath is a ringfort, a roughly circular enclosure built from earth and used, for the most part, during the early medieval period in Ireland as a farmstead or place of habitation for a single family and their livestock. The one at Drumrath is a particularly well-preserved example of the form.

The enclosure takes the shape of a raised subcircular platform, measuring approximately 42 metres on its longer axis and 38.5 metres across the shorter. It is bounded by a substantial earthen bank, and beyond that bank sits a wide, deep fosse, which is the term for a defensive ditch, still partly waterlogged today. That waterlogging is significant; it suggests the fosse retains something close to its original character rather than having silted up or been drained over the centuries. On the south-south-east side, a partly blocked break in the bank, accompanied by a causeway crossing the fosse, almost certainly marks the original entrance to the enclosure. The positioning of an entrance to the south or south-east is a pattern seen in many Irish ringforts, likely reflecting both practical and perhaps ritual preferences for orientation.