This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a class of enclosed settlement built predominantly in the early medieval period, typically between the sixth and tenth centuries. Most were farmsteads, home to a single family and their livestock, defined by one or more earthen banks with a ditch, known as a fosse, cut between them. The Ranaghan example is a bivallate example, meaning it has two concentric banks with an intervening fosse, which suggests it may have belonged to someone of reasonable local standing.

The enclosure measures approximately 35 metres on its north-west to south-east axis and around 29 metres across the other way, making it a modest but coherent structure. The inner bank has been partially quarried away on its north-western and south-south-western sides, damage that probably reflects centuries of agricultural activity rather than any deliberate destruction. Despite this, the fosse and outer bank remain visible when approached from the south-west and from the north-west to north-north-east. Inside the enclosure, faint traces of cultivation ridges run from north-north-east to south-south-west, suggesting the interior was worked as farmland at some point after the ringfort's original use had ended. Some 550 metres to the north-west lies a separate moated site, a later medieval feature typically associated with Anglo-Norman settlement, which hints at a long and layered pattern of occupation in this corner of Westmeath. The ridge commands open views in every direction, a quality that would have mattered to anyone choosing where to build and farm in an earlier, less certain world.