From its slight elevation, the views extend to both the Sheep's Head and Mizen Peninsulas, a panorama that almost certainly explains why someone chose this particular spot, perhaps fifteen hundred years ago, to build a home and mark out their territory.

The site is a rath, the most common type of early medieval settlement monument in Ireland. A rath is essentially a farmstead enclosure, its occupants typically a farming family of some local standing, the earthen bank serving as a boundary and a modest deterrent to livestock straying or cattle raiders passing through. This example measures twenty metres in diameter, with a raised interior platform rising about a metre above the surrounding ground. The enclosing bank survives to the west and north, still around 1.8 metres wide, though reduced over centuries to a fraction of its original height. To the other sides, the slope of the knoll itself takes over as a natural scarp, dropping away about a metre. The interior is now partially covered in ferns, a quiet form of occupation by the landscape reclaiming what was once someone's domestic ground.