What sits there is a rath, the Irish term for a roughly circular earthwork enclosure, typically built during the early medieval period as a farmstead or place of refuge. This one is large enough and well-engineered enough to reward a careful look, even if the surrounding landscape gives little away from a distance.

The enclosure measures approximately 26 metres across its north-northeast to south-southwest axis and is defined by two concentric earth and stone banks with a wide, deep fosse, or ditch, running between them. The inner bank is the more impressive of the two, particularly along its southwestern to northern arc, where the remains of stone facing are still visible, the original builders having lined the bank's inner edge with dressed or laid stone to hold the earthwork in place. The outer bank survives in poorer condition. What makes this example particularly notable is the entrance at the northeast: a stone-lined gap roughly 2.4 metres wide leading onto a causeway some 3.4 metres across and three-quarters of a metre high, its sides revetted with stone. Causeways of this kind spanned the fosse and controlled access to the interior, a point of some significance when the enclosure was in use. Inside, the ground rises unevenly towards the centre, a feature that sometimes indicates the remains of structures or deliberate levelling from an earlier phase of occupation. The townland boundary with Jordanstown runs about 70 metres to the west, and that with Lisnacask lies roughly 75 metres to the east, placing the rath almost exactly on a territorial edge, which may or may not be coincidental.