The trees are not decorative; they were planted inside the enclosure at some point after the site had already slipped out of living use, and the result is an odd inversion, the interior now densely wooded while the surrounding farmland remains open grazing ground.

The site is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which is the most common monument type in the Irish countryside. Ringforts were typically enclosed farmsteads of the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, surrounded by one or more earthen banks and ditches that provided a degree of protection for a family and their livestock. This example at Maulyregan sits on a north-facing slope and takes a circular form measuring 30.5 metres across in both directions, a near-perfect round. Its enclosing bank survives to a height of only 0.3 metres, reduced by centuries of cultivation, grazing, and weathering to little more than a gentle ripple in the ground. That it remains visible at all, even in this eroded state, is partly a consequence of the slope it occupies and partly luck.