What makes it easy to overlook is precisely what makes it worth attention: the earthen bank that once enclosed its top has worn down to little more than a scarp, a slumped edge where a proper defensive perimeter once stood. This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the type of enclosed farmstead that once dotted the early medieval Irish countryside in its thousands, typically occupied between roughly the sixth and tenth centuries. Most were the working homes of farming families, their circular or oval banks and ditches defining a domestic space rather than a military one.

What survives at Rootate preserves just enough detail to read the original form. Along the western side, traces of an internal fosse, a ditch running inside the bank rather than outside it, can still be made out, though it has reduced to around 3.3 metres wide and a mere 0.3 metres deep. More legible is the ancient entrance on the north-eastern side, where a deliberate gap, about 1.8 metres across, interrupts the scarp. Entrances positioned to face north-east or east are a recurring feature of Irish ringforts, though the reasons for this preference remain a matter of some discussion among archaeologists. A second, more recent depression on the north-north-western side is a later intrusion, unrelated to the original design, a reminder that these earthworks have continued to be used, crossed, and disturbed long after their original occupants were gone.