What they would be crossing, however, is the interior of an early medieval ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built in Ireland roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and one of the most common archaeological monument types on the island. This particular example, sitting in pasture in Rathpalatine, County Limerick, is roughly circular, measuring 44 metres north to south and 42 metres east to west, with an earthen bank and an outer fosse, or ditch, encircling what would once have been a family farmstead.

The monument survives in a partial state. The earthen bank, which stands roughly 0.5 metres above the interior ground level and 0.85 metres above the exterior, has been levelled along its north-north-east to east arc, and the external fosse, originally about 2.4 metres wide and 0.4 metres deep, has been infilled from the east around to the west-south-west. These are the kinds of gradual alterations that accumulate over centuries of agricultural use, as farmers work around, and sometimes through, features that predate them by a millennium or more. A farm trackway now skirts the site along its north-east to east edge, a reminder that the land has been in continuous use long after the rath's original occupants were gone. The site was compiled by Denis Power and uploaded to the record in August 2011.

The site lies in open pasture, so the earthwork is best appreciated in low winter or early morning light, when the slight rise of the interior and the trace of the surviving bank cast enough shadow to read the form of the place. The partially infilled fosse is easiest to detect on the western side, where it is better preserved. There is no formal access infrastructure, and visitors should be aware that this is agricultural land. The surviving bank section, running from approximately east around to the north-north-east, gives the clearest sense of the original enclosure, and standing inside the gentle upward slope of the interior, it is not difficult to understand why a family might have chosen this slight elevation, modest as it is, when deciding where to build.