What lies beneath the vegetation is a subcircular rath, roughly 41 metres north to south and 38.5 metres east to west, its form preserved by two concentric earthen banks separated by a fosse, the term for the ditch dug between them. That combination of dual banks and intervening fosse suggests this was once a settlement of some social standing; single-banked raths were far more common, and the additional circuit of earthwork implied greater effort, and perhaps greater status, on the part of whoever built it.

A rath is an early medieval farmstead enclosure, typically associated with the period between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, when Ireland's rural landscape was organised around these circular defended homesteads. At the southern side of this example, a causewayed gap approximately four metres wide may represent the original entrance, a feature that would have given controlled access across the fosse. The inner bank retains traces of stone-facing at the south, and similar traces appear on the outer bank at the north-north-west, suggesting that at least parts of the earthworks were reveted in stone to stabilise or reinforce them. Associated with the enclosure is a possible souterrain, an underground passage or chamber, often stone-lined, that in early medieval Ireland served variously as storage space, a place of refuge, or a means of concealed movement. A field wall has since been built around the monument, folding it into the working agricultural landscape it has quietly occupied for well over a thousand years.