When asked about the site on his land near Loughourna in County Tipperary, the landowner noted that "only one ring remains," implying the monument was once bivallate, meaning it originally had two concentric enclosing banks rather than one. That missing ring is, in its absence, the most interesting thing here.

Ringforts, sometimes called raths, are the most common archaeological monument type in Ireland, with tens of thousands surviving across the country. They were typically built and occupied during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and served as enclosed farmsteads for a single family or household. A bivallate example would have indicated a household of some status, the extra bank and ditch signalling social standing as much as offering additional defence. At Loughourna, the surviving enclosure is roughly circular, measuring about 28 metres north to south and 25.5 metres east to west. It sits on a gently south-facing slope in undulating pastureland, the kind of landscape where early medieval farmers would have chosen their ground carefully, balancing drainage, aspect, and visibility. The remaining bank is composed of earth and stone, and while it is noticeably eroded in places, it still stands to an external height of around 1.38 metres. Outside it lies a fosse, a defensive ditch roughly 5.6 metres wide, with traces of what may be the outer bank still visible to the north, where it has been quietly absorbed into a modern field boundary. To the south, both the fosse and any outer bank have vanished entirely into the working landscape.