Locally it has long been called McGuires Fort, a designation recorded as far back as 1914, when Neary noted it in the literature. The personal name attached to it is a reminder of how ringforts across Ireland tend to accumulate the identities of later landowners or prominent families, the earlier, anonymous builders entirely forgotten beneath layers of local memory.

A rath is a type of ringfort defined by earthen banks and ditches rather than stone, typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, and understood to have functioned as enclosed farmsteads for prosperous families. This example measures 35.6 metres in diameter and retains a scarp, an intervening fosse (a defensive ditch), and an outer bank, though the monument is poorly preserved overall. The south-south-west section has been quarried away, and a field bank cuts across the earthwork at both the north-east and the south, further interrupting its original form. The fosse and outer bank survive most clearly along the arc running from the north-west through to the north-east. Approximately 275 metres to the west lies a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage associated with early medieval settlement, which may well have served whoever occupied this enclosure or a nearby one. Whether the two features are directly related is not established, but their proximity in this quiet stretch of north Galway is suggestive.