It measures about thirty metres across, enclosed by a low bank of earth and stone that reaches no higher than eighty centimetres at its tallest point. Boulders have been dumped onto the bank to the north-east, and the southern side is heavily overgrown, which together give the site a slightly disordered, half-forgotten quality that is actually rather common among surviving examples of this type.

This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a class of monument that was constructed and occupied primarily during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Ringforts functioned as enclosed farmsteads, the circular bank and any accompanying ditch serving as a boundary and a degree of protection for a family, their livestock, and their dwellings within. They are among the most numerous archaeological monument types in Ireland, with tens of thousands recorded across the country, yet each one represents a specific household and a particular patch of ground that someone, at some point, decided was worth enclosing and defending. The Rushanes example is modest in scale and shows no obvious internal features from the surface, but its survival in pasture, however degraded, means the underlying archaeology remains at least partially intact beneath the vegetation and the tumbled stone.