Sitting on a gentle rise in undulating grassland near Lissyconor in north County Galway, the site is a rath, a type of circular or subcircular earthwork enclosure built during the early medieval period, typically between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and used as a defended farmstead. Most people drive past dozens of these across Ireland without knowing it. This one, however, is worn down to the point where reading its original form requires a certain patience.

The rath measures roughly 38 metres east to west and 34 metres north to south, giving it a slightly oval footprint. It was originally defined by two earthen banks with a fosse, or ditch, running between them, a double-banked arrangement that would have marked out a reasonably substantial enclosure by the standards of the type. What survives today is partial. The inner bank holds its shape from the south-south-east around through the south and south-west, but elsewhere the enclosing element has been reduced to a scarp, and a later field wall has been built directly over it on the western and northern sides, as so often happens when agricultural land is reorganised over centuries and older boundaries become convenient raw material. The outer bank and fosse are visible only at the south-west corner. Adding further interest to the immediate landscape, a megalithic structure of some kind lies approximately 50 metres to the east, suggesting that this particular patch of ground drew human attention across very different periods of prehistory and early history.