It is a small but telling detail, suggesting the people who built it were not simply throwing up a defensive ring and hoping for the best, but were shaping the ground with some care.

A ringfort, or rath, is one of the most common early medieval monument types in Ireland, typically a circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and ditch, used as a farmstead and homestead from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. This particular example measures approximately 30 metres north to south and 33 metres east to west, making it a fairly typical domestic scale. The enclosing earthwork shifts character as it runs around the site: from west around to the east-south-east it takes the form of a raised earthen bank standing about 1.2 metres high, while from the east-south-east back around to the west the boundary becomes a scarp, a natural or cut slope rather than a built-up bank, which rises to a more substantial 2.5 metres. A gap of around 3 metres in the bank to the north-east marks what was likely the original entrance. The site now sits within tillage land, which means it has survived agricultural activity but is subject to the pressures that come with working farmland.