These enclosures, known in Irish as raths, were the standard form of rural settlement across early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a circular bank and ditch enclosing a farming household and its outbuildings. What makes this particular example quietly puzzling is that it has apparently changed shape between one map and the next, or at least appears to have done so.

When the Ordnance Survey mapped this area for its first edition in 1843, the enclosure was recorded as somewhat D-shaped. By the time the revision was completed in 1952 and 1953, the outline read as more circular. Whether the rath itself changed through erosion and disturbance, or whether the two surveys simply interpreted the same irregular earthwork differently, is not entirely clear. What survives today is a roughly D-shaped enclosure measuring approximately 33 metres north to south, defined by an earth and stone bank that stands only about a third of a metre above the interior ground level but rises to a full metre on its outer face. Beyond the bank runs a fosse, the external ditch typical of these enclosures, around 2.7 metres wide. A gap on the western side, nearly four metres across, was probably broken through at some later point rather than representing the original entrance. Along the south-eastern side, the bank has been reduced to little more than a scarp, badly overgrown and hard to read. The site also contains a spring well in its south-eastern quadrant, one that flows strongly enough to feed a large pond just beyond the enclosure. The combination of marshy ground and a reliable internal water source suggests that whoever chose this location was balancing practicality against the obvious difficulties of building on soft, wet land.