This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that was once the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, built by farming families who used a raised earthen bank to define their territory and shelter their household. Thousands survive across the country in varying states of repair, but this one in north Galway sits at the more weathered end of that spectrum.

The enclosure is roughly subcircular, measuring around 33 metres from east to west. What remains of the original bank is clearest at the north-east and around the southern arc from south-east through to south-west, though even there it has been worn down considerably over the centuries. On the other sides, the boundary has reduced further still to little more than a degraded scarp, a slight drop in the ground that hints at where a more substantial earthwork once stood. A field wall, built at some later date, runs directly over the bank on the north-east side, a common enough fate for ancient earthworks in a working agricultural landscape where stone and raised ground were simply useful building materials, whatever their origins.