A rath, or ringfort, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks, built during the early medieval period as a farmstead for a family of some local standing. This one is easy to overlook. It straddles a low rise in rolling grassland, sloping gently down towards the Palmerstown River to the south-east, and at first glance it reads simply as a slightly uneven field.

The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring around 28.8 metres on its north-east to south-west axis and 25.6 metres across the other way. The defining earthen bank is broad, running to about 5.6 metres in width, but relatively modest in height, rising to around 1.55 metres on the external face at the south-west and closer to 2 metres at the north-east. The interior has slumped somewhat over the centuries, leaving a wide depression inside the bank. Along the inner face at the south-west and west, stones protrude from the earthwork, which may be the remains of a kerb or stone facing that once lined the bank. A twelve-metre section of the bank along the south-east to south has been levelled almost flat, and this disturbed area is the most likely location of the original entrance. In the northern part of the interior there is a shallow circular hollow, about 1.2 metres across and 0.2 metres deep, whose purpose is unclear. Some cutting of the outer bank face has occurred at the north-north-west, and farm stock have contributed further to the erosion. Field fences now run along the south-east, south, and west edges of the site.

What makes the situation of this rath slightly more interesting is the presence of a second one, now destroyed, that once stood approximately 150 metres to the north-north-west. Pairs or clusters of raths within sight of one another are not unusual in the Irish landscape, and they hint at a time when this stretch of Mayo was considerably more populated and organised than the quiet farmland suggests today.