It is the kind of earthwork that can read, at first glance, as a natural feature of the landscape, a gentle swelling of ground that only reveals its true geometry when you begin to walk its perimeter. What you are looking at is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common class of early medieval monument in the country, typically understood as the enclosed homestead of a farming family, though their exact functions varied considerably across time and region.

This particular example is notably well-preserved and more elaborate than many of its type. The interior platform measures roughly 40 metres north to south and 36 metres east to west, enclosed by a substantial earthen bank between 5.1 and 6.2 metres wide. That inner bank stands up to two metres high on its outer face, which gives a genuine sense of enclosure even today. Beyond it lies a fosse, the term for a defensive or boundary ditch, between four and six metres across, and beyond that a second, lower bank, between 3.4 and 4 metres wide. The presence of this outer bank and fosse, making the site bivallate rather than the more common single-banked form, suggests either a household of some local standing or a site that was felt to require a more serious perimeter. The original entrance survives on the eastern side: a gap of 3.6 metres in the inner bank, aligned with a causeway that carries the old approach across the fosse.