Known in Irish as Lios a Giolla Gill, meaning the fort of the white servant, it belongs to a category of site that was once a common feature of the Irish countryside: a rath, or ringfort, typically a circular earthen enclosure that served as a defended farmstead during the early medieval period. Thousands were built across Ireland, and thousands have since been levelled by agriculture, erosion, or development. This one has left no surface trace at all.

What makes the site particularly interesting is the narrow window in which it was recorded. When the Ordnance Survey mapped the area in 1841 to 1842, the enclosure was visible and noted on the map as a circular feature. By the time the later edition of the same map was produced, it had already disappeared from the record, suggesting it was lost to the land within a relatively short period. The Irish place name survived the structure itself, preserving in the word lios, one of the standard Irish terms for a ringfort, a memory of something that no longer has any physical presence. The name Lios a Giolla Gill is an unusual one; giolla gill, the white servant or fair-haired attendant, hints at a personal association with the site that history has otherwise swallowed entirely.