The bank, composed of earth and stone, stands roughly one and a half metres high and encloses a roughly circular area some thirty-seven metres across. Unassuming from a distance, it is the kind of feature that could easily be dismissed as a field boundary or a quirk of the landscape, but the geometry gives it away.

This is a rath, a form of ringfort that was one of the most common settlement types in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the sixth to the twelfth century. A rath consisted of a raised earthen bank, sometimes reinforced with stone, enclosing a farmstead where a family would have lived, kept livestock, and stored food. The bank served both as a practical enclosure and as a marker of status. What makes the Oughtihery example particularly interesting is the possible presence of a souterrain within the interior. A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, typically associated with ringforts, and thought to have served for storage, refuge, or both. The damp, cool conditions underground made them useful for keeping food, and their narrow entrances made them defensible. Whether the feature here was ever fully investigated is not recorded.