It measures roughly 32 metres north to south and 26 metres east to west, its enclosing bank of earth and stone worn down over centuries to something easily mistaken for a natural rise in the ground. A section of that bank has been dug away at the north-north-west, and two later field boundaries, one appearing after 1700, another after 1837, cut across the monument, folding it quietly into the working geometry of the post-medieval landscape. Inside, faint cultivation ridges still run north to south, traces of agricultural use long after the site's original purpose had been forgotten.

The earthwork is a rath, the most common type of early medieval settlement site found across Ireland. A rath was typically a farmstead enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches, home to a single family and their livestock, and most date to somewhere between the sixth and tenth centuries. What makes this one worth noting is partly the setting: the hillock commands views in every direction across the undulating midland countryside, and a stream marking the old townland boundary with Stonestown runs just 70 metres to the south. That boundary stream is likely very old itself, the kind of feature that tends to fossilise ancient divisions in the land. The rath's position, elevated and outward-looking, reflects a choice made by whoever built it well over a thousand years ago, a preference for visibility that the surrounding grassland, reclaimed from less tractable ground at some point in the intervening centuries, now frames in a quietly altered way.