But that ridge is one of the more intriguing details of a double-banked ringfort at Rathfarra, a site that rewards patience and a willingness to read a landscape that has largely been returned to pasture. Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, typically dating from around the 5th to the 12th centuries, and several thousand survive across the country in varying states of preservation. This one, however, has an unusual geometry and a few features that set it apart from the more straightforward examples.

The site was recorded by Denis Power and uploaded to the national monuments record in August 2011. It sits on a gentle northeast-facing slope in low-lying pasture, and its plan is roughly circular, measuring 23.2 metres north to south and 23.8 metres east to west. Two concentric earthen banks enclose the interior, separated by a fosse, which is simply a ditch dug between the banks, here measuring 3.4 metres wide and 0.35 metres deep. The inner bank behaves differently depending on which side you approach: moving from the northwest around to the northeast, it rises to a noticeably scarp-like profile, reaching 1.4 metres in height and 5.2 metres in width, before becoming barely traceable as you continue around toward the east-southeast. The outer bank, only about 0.15 metres high externally, can be followed from the northeast back around to the northwest, but fades elsewhere. That elongated ridge extending from the outer bank at the east-southeast, continuing northeast for around 62 metres, has no obvious structural parallel within the recorded description and may represent a field boundary or annexe of some kind. In the southeast quadrant of the interior there is also an ovoid depression, roughly 14 metres east to west and 4.7 metres north to south, sunk to a depth of 0.65 metres.

The interior slopes gently downward toward the east and is under pasture, so there is nothing dramatic to announce the site from a distance. The asymmetry of the earthworks is what makes careful on-the-ground observation worthwhile: the contrast between the pronounced scarped section of the inner bank on the northwest-to-northeast arc and its near-disappearance elsewhere suggests either differential erosion or an original design that responded to the natural slope. The fosse is only legible in the section where the outer bank still survives. Visiting outside the summer growing season, when vegetation is lower, gives the best chance of tracing the outer bank and the long northeast-running ridge across the field.