What makes it worth a second look is the way it has been quietly absorbed into the working landscape: the outer ditch, once dug to define and defend the enclosure, has been pressed into service as a laneway. The archaeology has become infrastructure.

This is a rath, the most common type of early medieval settlement monument in Ireland. A rath typically consisted of a roughly circular area enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches, serving as a farmstead for a single family group, probably between the sixth and tenth centuries. The Raferigeen example is a modest specimen, roughly 25 metres across, enclosed by an earthen bank that rises about 1.6 metres on the interior and is stone-faced in parts along its southern to eastern arc. Where the bank gives way, a natural or cut scarp continues the line of enclosure from east back round to the south-southwest. The external fosse, a flat-bottomed or V-cut trench that would have reinforced the bank's defensive impression, runs from the south around to the north-northwest before it becomes the laneway. The entrance, just two metres wide, faces to the north-northwest, an orientation that is not uncommon in Irish ringforts and may reflect practical considerations of prevailing wind or approach routes as much as any formal convention.