The monument is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead typically built during the early medieval period, between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands of them once punctuated the Irish countryside, and while many have been levelled by ploughing or land clearance, this one in north Galway has held on, at least partially.

The rath measures approximately 29 metres in diameter and survives in fair condition across part of its circuit. A bank defines the enclosure from the north-east around to the south-east, while a scarp, a slope or cut in the ground rather than a built-up bank, marks the stretch from the north-west around to the north-east. The monument was noted as early as 1914, when it appeared in a survey by Neary. What complicates the picture today is a field wall that intersects the monument at both the north-west and south-east, and to the south of that wall no visible surface trace of the original earthwork remains. The wall, almost certainly a later agricultural boundary, has effectively erased or buried the southern portion of the circuit, leaving the rath as a partial arc rather than the complete ring it once was.