On a gentle westward-facing slope in Tooraneena, County Waterford, a roughly oval enclosure of grass-covered earth sits quietly in the landscape, its perimeter bank still standing up to four metres high on its downslope side. That asymmetry is not accidental. Ringforts, which were the most common form of enclosed settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically used the natural gradient of a slope to their advantage: earth excavated from a surrounding ditch, or fosse, would be piled inward to form the bank, and the height differential between the uphill and downhill sides could be dramatic even where the slope itself seems modest. Here, however, no fosse is visible at all, which sets this example slightly apart from the more familiar pattern.

The enclosure measures roughly 59 metres north to south and 49 metres east to west, with the earthen bank ranging between 3.2 and 5 metres in width. On the higher, eastern side it rises only about 1.2 metres above the interior, while on the western, downslope side it reaches closer to four metres when measured from outside. A small stream runs some 20 metres to the northwest. No original entrance has been identified with certainty, though there are gaps in the perimeter at the south, southwest, and northwest; whether any of these represents the genuine threshold or simply later breaks in the bank is unclear. Perhaps the most intriguing feature is a souterrain in the northwestern interior. A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, typically associated with early medieval ringforts and thought to have served for storage, refuge, or both. Their presence within a rath is relatively common across Ireland, but each one tends to carry its own particular character depending on construction and setting.