The effect is of a levelled platform cut into the hillside, the interior artificially flat despite the gradient around it. The northern half has been reclaimed by heavy vegetation, which gives the place a lopsided quality, half-legible and half-swallowed.

This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common type of archaeological monument in the country. Ringforts are roughly circular enclosures, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, and were used predominantly as farmsteads during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. They served as enclosed homesteads, with the banks offering protection for livestock as much as for the people who lived inside them. The example at Farrandeligeen is modest in scale, around twenty-five metres in diameter, and uses the natural topography of the slope to reinforce its southern boundary rather than relying entirely on a built bank. The steep scarp on that side would have made approach from below considerably more difficult, a practical consideration that also speaks to how carefully these sites were positioned within the landscape.