A rath, as these earthen enclosures are known, was typically a circular or oval defended farmstead of the early medieval period, built up from a raised internal platform, an encircling earthen bank, and a fosse, or outer ditch, to discourage casual intrusion. This particular example, known on Ordnance Survey maps as Rathwanowen, sits on a broad terrace commanding wide views to the west, north, and east, the kind of deliberate positioning that recurs again and again in Irish rath construction, where visibility and a degree of natural defence went hand in hand.

The site shows up on the 1838 OS six-inch map as a clearly circular form, but by the 1922 edition it appears subrectangular, its outline blurred by the creep of later field boundaries that have either absorbed or cut through sections of the outer bank to the east, south-east, and west. What survives is a raised oval area roughly 35 to 40 metres in diameter, bounded by an earthen scarp that reaches about 1.7 metres in external height at the north-east, and enclosed by a fosse some 2.8 to 3 metres wide at the same point. Remnants of an external bank persist along the north-north-west to north-east arc, still standing to 1.3 metres on its outer face. A low area in the scarp at the east-north-east, paired with what appears to be a causeway crossing the fosse, may mark the original entrance. Inside, low stony mounds visible through gaps in the overgrowth are most likely the accumulated result of field clearance over the centuries, the landscape doing what it always does, folding the past into the practical. A second rath lies about 150 metres to the south-west, suggesting this was not an isolated settlement but part of a broader pattern of early habitation on this hillside.