To a passing eye it is simply a boundary between grazing fields, but that arc of earthen bank, still standing to about 1.8 metres, is one of the last surviving traces of a ringfort that was otherwise long ago levelled into the surrounding pasture.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when they are earthen rather than stone-built, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a homestead or small farmstead within a raised circular bank and ditch. The example at Hightown, on a north-facing slope above its surrounding fields, was recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842 as a circular enclosure with a diameter of roughly 20 metres, making it a modest but characteristic example of the type. By the time the site was formally assessed, most of the original earthwork had been demolished and the interior levelled, absorbed gradually into the working farmland around it. Only that one curving remnant of bank survived, preserved almost by accident along a field boundary, where its convenient height made it useful as a fence line rather than an obstacle to remove.