What survives in a low-lying field near Rathlee in County Sligo is a site that reads as whole only if you know what you are looking for: a gently raised circular area roughly 27.5 metres across, with a clear earthen bank and accompanying fosse on its western side, and almost nothing on the east, where both have been levelled away. The contrast between the two halves is the most telling thing about the place.

A rath is an early medieval enclosed farmstead, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, built to mark territory, contain livestock, and signal status. At Rathlee, the surviving western bank measures around 4.5 metres wide, rising about 0.8 metres on the interior face and 1.6 metres on the exterior at its most pronounced point to the north-west. Outside it runs a fosse, a defensive ditch, now reduced to a shallow depression roughly two to two and a half metres wide and only about 0.3 metres deep. The 1836 Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded the site as a semicircular enclosure curving from the south-east to the north, suggesting the eastern half was already gone or compromised by that point. In the south-west quadrant of the interior there is a possible souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber associated with early medieval settlement, sometimes used for storage or refuge.