The earthwork is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a family's dwelling house and outbuildings within a raised earthen bank. What gives this particular example a certain quiet persistence is that the land around it has never stopped being used; cattle have worn small gaps into the bank to the east and north-north-west, a laneway traces the southern edge, and a drain runs immediately outside and concentric to the bank along the northern and eastern sides, suggesting generations of practical accommodation between the ancient enclosure and the working farm.

The site measures roughly 37 metres east to west and 36 metres north to south, making it a fairly typical example in terms of scale, though the internal height of the bank reaches a maximum of 2.6 metres, which is a solid, substantial earthwork by any measure. There is a deliberate break in the bank to the west, likely the original entrance, orientated toward the slope's downward fall and perhaps toward whatever trackway or field system once connected this enclosure to the wider community. Ringforts of this kind are generally dated to the early medieval period, broadly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and they are found in their thousands across Ireland, yet each one carries a slightly different set of circumstances, a different relationship to the terrain, to water, to the lanes and drains that accumulated around it over centuries.