The rath, a type of ringfort formed by an earthen bank and surrounding ditch, sits at the foot of a low ridge on good pasture ground, with Ballynafid Lake lying roughly 110 metres to the west. It is not a dramatic monument. The enclosing bank is low and damaged, and the external fosse, the defensive ditch that would once have run around the outside, is now only legible on the eastern and west-north-western sides.

By the time the Ordnance Survey was producing its Fair Plan maps in 1837, the site was already being recorded as a tree-lined enclosure annotated simply as a "fort", which tells us both that it was recognisable enough to merit marking and that its original function had long since become a matter of local tradition rather than living memory. Ringforts of this kind were typically built and occupied during the early medieval period, serving as enclosed farmsteads for the farming families and minor lords of their day. This one measures approximately 35 metres in diameter north to south, and preserves traces of two entrances, one at the south-west now wide and open, a second at the south-east that has been blocked up, though neither is particularly well defined at ground level. Post-1700 field boundaries cut across the perimeter at the north, south-east, and south-west, and cultivation ridges running east to west are still visible across the interior, evidence of agricultural use long after anyone thought of the bank as a boundary worth respecting. The profile of the enclosing bank has also been sharpened in recent times, giving it an artificially neat appearance that somewhat misrepresents its original form.