The one at Scurmore occupies the rocky summit of a low ridge running northwest to southeast, and its layout repays close attention. A raised circular area some 33.5 metres across is enclosed by a bank of earth and stone between 5.6 and 6.6 metres wide, still standing between one and 1.8 metres high depending on whether you measure from the inside or the outside. Beyond that bank lies a shallow external fosse, the ditch that would have made the whole enclosure harder to approach, and beyond the fosse a second, slighter bank, now surviving only on the northwest and northeast sides.

A rath is the Irish term for this kind of enclosed farmstead, typically dating to the early medieval period, roughly 500 to 1000 AD, when they served as the defended homesteads of farming families rather than as military installations in any formal sense. What marks this example out is the double-bank arrangement, with the outer bank sitting right at the lip of the fosse, giving the enclosure an added layer of definition. The original entrance is still legible: a two-metre gap in the inner bank on the east side, with faint traces of a causeway that once carried the threshold across the fosse. The proximity of a second rath to the south-southeast raises questions about whether the two were contemporary, whether the same family or community built and used both, and what the relationship between neighbouring enclosures of this kind actually looked like on the ground.