This is a rath, a type of ringfort, which was the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically serving as a defended farmstead for a single family or small community. Most people walk past such places without realising what they are, and at Sandylane, the encroaching vegetation makes that easier still.

The site was recorded and compiled by Denis Power, with details uploaded in June 2013. The earthen bank encloses an area measuring roughly twenty metres on the northeast-southwest axis and eighteen metres north to south. The bank itself is modest, rising about twenty-five centimetres on the interior side and reaching seventy centimetres on the exterior, with a width of just over a metre. At the west-southwest, there is a noticeable dip in the bank some four and a half metres wide, which likely marks the original entrance. The interior slopes gently down towards the southeast, following the natural lie of the ground on what is described as a gentle southeast-facing slope. Cattle have been grazing here, and both the interior and the bank show signs of poaching, the soft churning of waterlogged ground that livestock leave behind in poorly-drained fields.

The monument sits within working farmland, so access would require landowner permission. The scrub vegetation that now obscures much of the bank means the outline of the rath is easiest to read from a slight distance or elevation, where the curve of the earthwork becomes visible beneath the growth. The ground, already noted as poorly drained, is likely to be soft underfoot for much of the year, so visits in drier summer months would make the going considerably easier. What to look for is not grandeur but geometry, the slow arc of the bank as it describes its circle, and the gap at the west-southwest where, on an ordinary morning more than a millennium ago, someone would have passed in or out.