A rath, the Irish term for a roughly circular earthen enclosure typically used as a farmstead or defended homestead during the early medieval period, this one overlooks the mouth of the Palmerstown River, with grass-covered sand dunes pressing in from the north and north-east. The combination of a settlement monument in dialogue with shifting coastal dune systems is not something you encounter every day.

The enclosure itself is subcircular, measuring 21 metres across in both directions, and is defined by a raised scarp rather than the more familiar bank-and-ditch arrangement. The northern and western sections are the best preserved, where the outer slope extends nearly five metres wide and rises to around 1.6 metres at its highest point. Along the inner edge, a low lip of between 0.3 and 0.4 metres survives. At the north-north-east and north-east, the outer face of the scarp incorporates what appears to be a kerb-like line of upright slabs and boulders, though whether this is an original construction detail or a later addition is not entirely clear. The eastern side is considerably more worn down and less well defined. Stranger still is an internal feature: a linear scarp running roughly north-north-west to south-south-east through the interior, dividing the enclosed space between a higher western section and a lower eastern third, with a short stretch of its southern end faced in large stones. What this division originally represented, whether a yard division, a structural terrace, or something else, remains an open question. Outside the rath to the north-west, a shallow semi-circular depression appears to be the result of more recent, unrelated disturbance rather than any ancient feature.