The bank has been colonised by briars and bushes, the external ditch is thick with rushes, and the slightly soggy interior slopes away to the south in a way that suggests it has never quite dried out. Easy to walk past, easy to dismiss as a scrubby field boundary; and yet the geometry, once you clock it, is deliberate and ancient.

Raths, or ringforts, are among the most numerous archaeological monuments in Ireland, with tens of thousands recorded across the country. They are generally associated with the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, and functioned as enclosed farmsteads, their earthen banks and ditches marking out a defended domestic space for a family and their livestock. This example at Knocknabooly Middle is modest in scale, the enclosed area measuring approximately 22 metres north to south and 24 metres east to west. The bank survives to an internal height of around 0.65 metres and an external height of 0.8 metres, with an outer fosse some 3.5 metres wide and 0.3 metres deep still visible, though largely obscured by vegetation. A causeway entrance to the east, roughly 3.4 metres wide, marks where people and animals once passed in and out. Part of the circuit has been absorbed into a later field boundary, which is a common fate for these monuments; farming continued around them, and sometimes through them, across subsequent centuries. The site was compiled as part of a survey record by Denis Power, uploaded in August 2011.

The site sits on a gentle south-facing slope in what is now open pasture, which means there are no dramatic approaches or formal access points. The interior is poorly drained, with standing rushes in places, so waterproof footwear is sensible whatever the season. The bank itself is the main thing to trace on the ground, reading the circuit from where it is clearly earthen and banked to where it merges into the field boundary to the south-south-east. The causeway entrance on the eastern side is the clearest surviving feature and gives a sense of the original scale and intention of the enclosure.