The trench is not the only wound: a field boundary slices across the south-western quadrant, levelling what remained of the bank there, and the eastern side has taken further damage from the same quarrying activity. What survives is a roughly circular enclosure about twenty-nine metres in diameter, defined by a low stoney bank of irregular stones, standing less than a metre high on both its inner and outer faces.

A rath, as ringforts of this type are sometimes called, was typically a farmstead of the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, enclosed by one or more earthen or stone banks to define the household territory and provide some degree of protection for people and livestock. This one sits in the Goul river valley in County Kilkenny, on gently rolling grassland just above the flood plain, with the ground falling away to the south and west towards the River Goul itself. The bedrock lies unusually close to the surface inside the enclosure, which may partly explain why it attracted quarrying interest: the stone was evidently accessible. Spoil and dumped material still litter the interior, the accumulated evidence of that extraction. Despite the cumulative damage, the basic circuit of the enclosure is still readable on the ground, enough to give a sense of the original form even where individual sections have been truncated or removed entirely.