This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common type of archaeological monument in Ireland. Built predominantly during the early medieval period, raths served as enclosed farmsteads, their banks and ditches marking the boundary of a family's domestic space as much as offering a degree of protection. What makes this particular example quietly compelling is the precision of its surviving form: a stone wall enclosing an interior roughly 21 metres across, a wide external fosse, or ditch, running around the outside, and a broad terrace skirting the entire circuit between the two.

The entrance faces east, as is common with ringforts, and a causeway 3.5 metres wide carries the old approach across the fosse, with a ramp rising to the interior. The fosse itself is 5.5 metres wide, and the terrace that runs between it and the outer edge of the wall measures 7 metres across and rises 2.5 metres, giving the whole structure a layered, almost theatrical quality when viewed from outside. The interior is now partly obscured by overgrowth. Around 250 metres to the east lies a possible second rath, which, if confirmed, would suggest this was once a more densely occupied landscape than the quiet demesne pasture now implies. The castle whose grounds contain it, Markree Castle, has its own long history in the area, and the ringfort long predates any of it.