Most of these early medieval enclosures survive as grassy rings, their original purpose as farmsteads or high-status residences long since dissolved into landscape, but the one at Rearour carries a small biographical detail that suggests someone, at some point, saw it less as an archaeological remnant and more as a suitable spot for a plantation.

A rath is an earthen ringfort, a roughly circular enclosure defined by a bank and ditch, used extensively in early medieval Ireland as a defended farmstead or the residence of a local lord. The example at Rearour is oval rather than perfectly circular, measuring approximately 55 metres north to south and 46.5 metres east to west. The enclosing bank stands modestly, rising about 0.2 metres above the interior and 1.5 metres above the exterior ground level, which gives a reasonable sense of how the earthwork would have presented itself to anyone approaching from outside. The site looks out over a stream valley to the east, a positioning typical of ringforts, which were often sited with an eye to drainage, visibility, and access to water. The interior is now under pasture, though a reference by Hartnett in 1939 records that it was once planted with fir trees, a detail that points to a moment when the enclosure was being used in a practical, agricultural way rather than left to its own quiet persistence in the field.