The structure is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that was built and occupied across Ireland largely during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands survive across the country, though many have been reduced to faint crop marks or ploughed out of existence entirely. This one at Faghbane has fared somewhat better in outline, measuring approximately 31 metres in diameter, with an internal bank height of around 0.8 metres and an external height of about 1.5 metres. The difference in those two measurements reflects how the enclosing bank was typically thrown up from a surrounding ditch, giving a more imposing face to anyone approaching from outside.

What makes the Faghbane rath quietly interesting is how consistently it has been recorded across very different methods of observation. The Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of 1846 and 1893 to 1894 both show a circular enclosure of around 30 metres, suggesting the earthwork was already well enough defined in the nineteenth century to catch the attention of surveyors working at ground level. Then, in 1983, an aerial photograph confirmed the same circular form from above, the cropmark or earthwork shadow still legible from altitude more than a century after those first map records. The site also does not stand in isolation. A second rath lies approximately 90 metres to the east-south-east, a pairing that hints at a landscape once more densely settled than the present pasture would suggest.