What was once a circular ringfort, carefully recorded as such on the Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1838, is now a D-shape, its southern arc cut away by a road that bisects the site as neatly as a knife through a cake. The rest of the enclosure survives well enough, a raised earthen bank up to two and a half metres high and between six and eight metres wide, with a fosse, or external ditch, roughly four metres across running alongside it. These earthworks once formed a complete ring, the kind of enclosed farmstead that thousands of early medieval Irish families lived within, the whole family, their livestock, and their grain stores protected behind a wall of piled earth and whatever timber or thorn they could add to it.

Ringforts, sometimes called raths when defined by earthen banks rather than stone, are among the most numerous archaeological monuments in Ireland, with estimates ranging into the tens of thousands. Most date to the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. The townland name Rathcot itself preserves the word rath, suggesting this particular enclosure gave the surrounding area its name, which is a reasonable sign that the monument was prominent and locally significant long after it ceased to be inhabited. The 1838 map shows it still intact and circular at that point, meaning the road that now truncates the southern side was cut at some later date, removing a portion of both the bank and the fosse in the process. The enclosure measures thirty-seven metres on a southeast to northwest axis and twenty-nine metres north to south, occupying a gentle south-facing slope, the kind of aspect that would have made practical sense for anyone choosing a sheltered spot to build a home.