The trees follow the circuit of a rath, the Irish term for a roughly circular earthen ringfort, a type of enclosed settlement built throughout Ireland during the early medieval period, broadly from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. This one sits on a low rise with a gentle south-east-facing slope near Scotchfort, its interior now entirely consumed by a dense thicket of brambles, which lends it a sealed, unvisited quality even in open countryside.

The rath measures roughly twenty-five metres across, defined by an earthen inner bank and a fosse, that is, a surrounding ditch, which remains well defined around its full circuit. Beyond the fosse lies a second, outer bank, though its origins are genuinely uncertain. It survives only on the western half and is low and rather slight for most of its length, apart from a noticeably broader section on the south-east arc. It may be an original counterscarp bank, the kind of extra earthwork sometimes thrown up to reinforce a defended enclosure, or it may simply be a later field boundary that was built around the rath at some point in the agricultural history of the land. The inner bank itself is best preserved on the north-west half and has been worn to little more than a scarp on the south-east. An old farm trackway, visible on the 1930 Ordnance Survey six-inch map, once skirted the monument on its south-west to north-west edge, running just outside the outer bank, which hints at how the site was quietly incorporated into the working landscape of the area over the centuries. A gap of roughly two metres in the inner bank on the north-east side, largely hidden now by overgrowth, may preserve the line of the original entrance, and a second low break to the north adds a further ambiguity to the monument's plan.