Whatever grim local memory or folk tradition gave this West Cork valley its reputation, a ringfort sits quietly at its northern end, occupying a south-facing slope in what is now open pasture. The earthwork is roughly circular, measuring around 35 metres north to south and 30 metres east to west, and it has been here long enough to be absorbed into the working landscape, with part of its bank now doing duty as a field boundary.

A rath is an earthen ringfort, the most common type of early medieval settlement monument in Ireland, typically dating from roughly the 6th to the 10th century. They were farmsteads rather than fortresses, the raised bank and external fosse (a fosse being a ditch dug to reinforce the enclosure) providing a combination of status marker and practical barrier against livestock straying or being taken. This particular example retains a bank that reaches a maximum height of 3.1 metres on the SSW to NW arc, with a fosse 0.6 metres deep on the outside. The opposing arc, running from NW to SSW, survives as a lower rise with a shallower external ditch. The asymmetry is not unusual in raths; different sections of the bank were often built up more substantially depending on the slope of the ground and the direction from which protection seemed most necessary. Here, on a south-facing hillside with the peculiarly named glen falling away to the south, the builders clearly invested most of their effort in the more exposed upper side of the enclosure.