No visible trace of it survives, which gives the site an odd quality: a place defined partly by what cannot be seen. The rath itself crowns the summit of a hill in the undulating pastureland of Farravaun in County Galway, its roughly circular outline measuring approximately forty metres east to west and thirty-eight metres north to south.

Raths, also called ringforts, are the most common field monument in Ireland, built in their thousands during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. They typically enclosed a family farmstead, the earthen bank and ditch serving as a boundary marker and a deterrent to cattle raiders as much as a defensive wall. At Farravaun, the defining feature is a scarp, a steep natural or cut slope marking the edge of the enclosure, though a modern field wall has since been laid along the same line, quietly overwriting the earlier boundary. The monument is recorded as being in fair condition, which in archaeological terms means the form is legible but not pristine.

The souterrain tradition is the detail that lingers. Oral memory of underground chambers at sites like this one often outlasts any physical evidence, passed along through generations long after the stone lintels have collapsed or the entrance has been sealed by shifting ground. Whether the tradition at Farravaun reflects a genuine feature now lost to time, or something more ambiguous, there is no current way to say.