What makes it worth a second look is the sheer solidity of what remains: an earthen bank still standing 2.8 metres high, enclosing a circular area roughly 53 metres north to south and 54 metres east to west. These are not modest dimensions. The interior space is larger than many a town square, and the bank that surrounds it would have presented a genuinely imposing barrier to anyone approaching from the outside.

This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead that proliferated across Ireland during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Raths were typically the homes of farming families of some social standing, the enclosing bank serving as much as a marker of status and a boundary for livestock as a defensive structure. This example follows the form closely. Beyond the bank lies an external fosse, essentially a ditch, cut to a depth of 1.3 metres, and a causeway 5 metres wide crosses it to the east-northeast, marking where the original entrance would have been. The causeways of raths are often the single most telling feature still visible at ground level, pinpointing the orientation the original occupants chose, perhaps for reasons of shelter, sightlines, or the direction of the nearest track.