It is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, and for all its modest dimensions it belongs to a class of monument that once defined the rural landscape of early medieval Ireland. Estimates suggest there were once around 50,000 ringforts scattered across the island, most of them built and occupied between roughly 500 and 1000 AD, serving as the enclosed farmsteads of farming families and petty lords alike.

This particular example is roughly circular, measuring around 18 metres in diameter, and is defined by an earthen bank standing about 1.6 metres high. To the west and south-west, a shallow external fosse, essentially a ditch dug to provide the material for throwing up the bank, runs alongside the enclosure. The fosse here is recorded at around 0.2 metres deep, much reduced from whatever its original profile may have been. The interior is heavily overgrown, which is not unusual for sites like this; vegetation and centuries of agricultural use have a way of softening the edges of things. The west-facing slope on which it sits would have offered a practical vantage over the surrounding land, a common consideration in the siting of these enclosures.