Most raths, the earthen enclosures built across Ireland from the early medieval period onward as farmsteads for a single family or small community, present a fairly legible profile: a raised interior, a bank, a ditch. This one is more deliberate in its construction. Two earthen banks run on different arcs around the oval interior, separated by a fosse, the shallow ditch that would have made any approach to the enclosure considerably less straightforward than it looks from a distance.

The site occupies high ground in West Cork, oriented on a roughly oval plan measuring 37 metres north to south and 31 metres east to west. On its eastern to west-south-western arc, a scarp rises to around 1.3 metres, while the western section is defined by a lower earthen bank of about 0.3 metres. The second bank, running from west-north-west to north-east, stands to 0.9 metres and is separated from the inner bank by the intervening fosse. The elevated position is not incidental: it commands views of the Cousane Gap to the west, the Shehy Mountains to the north, and the Bandon River valley to the south-east. Whether this was chosen for surveillance, prestige, or simply the practical advantage of defensible high ground, the site would have read as a statement in the landscape. Inside the enclosure, cultivation ridges still run on a north-south axis, the remnant of agricultural use that long post-dates whoever originally raised the banks.