It is not immediately obvious for what it is, which is part of what makes it worth attention. The raised circular platform, measuring roughly 40.5 metres east to west and 35 metres north to south, is the surviving form of a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built predominantly during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. These were the homes of farming families, defined by an earthen bank and sometimes an outer ditch, and they once numbered in the tens of thousands across Ireland. This one in Farranyharpy is defined to the north and north-northeast by a natural scarp in the ground, while elsewhere the boundary has been redrawn in more recent centuries by a drystone wall, the kind of practical reuse of old boundaries that is common across the Irish countryside.

The enclosing element of the ringfort has been removed along its northwest to north-northwest arc, which is not unusual. Centuries of agricultural activity, stone-robbing, and general land clearance have left many Irish ringforts partially dismantled. What remains here is enough to read the original shape clearly, and within the interior, towards the southwest, a scatter of large boulders sits without obvious explanation. They may be the remnant of a structure, a collapsed wall, or simply glacial deposits that were always there and worked around. The notes do not say, and the boulders do not either.