It is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the type of enclosed circular or oval farmstead that was once so common across the Irish countryside that tens of thousands of them survive in various states of preservation. This particular example has fared less well than most. By the time anyone thought to write it down in any detail, it was already a fragment of what it once had been.

The 1897 Ordnance Survey 25-inch map recorded it as a raised sub-oval platform, with internal dimensions of roughly 20 metres northwest to southeast and external dimensions of around 36 metres across the same axis. It was defined by a fosse, the flat-bottomed ditch that typically encircled such enclosures, running from the northwest through to the west. At some point a spoil heap bank from a river drainage scheme cut across the site from the west to northwest, adding a layer of agricultural interference to the monument's already complicated story. By 1964, when O'Dwyer described it, the rath had been reduced considerably: a platform roughly 6 metres in diameter and 2.4 metres high, encircled by a ditch about 3.6 metres wide with traces of an outer bank still faintly visible. Even then, only about a third of the original structure remained. When surveyors returned in 2005, dense scrub vegetation had taken over, making any close examination impossible. A 2018 Google Earth image failed to pick it out at all.

Accessing this site is unlikely to be straightforward. Its location on river floodplain means the ground can be wet and difficult, and the scrub growth recorded in 2005 gives little reason to expect conditions have improved since. The proximity to Brittas Castle, itself on the western bank of the Mulkear, offers a useful landmark for orientation. Anyone with a serious interest in the site would do well to consult the most current Ordnance Survey mapping alongside the record held by the National Monuments Service before attempting a visit, and to be prepared for the possibility that the earthwork, already barely legible a decade ago, may now be almost entirely obscured.