This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common monument type in the Irish landscape. Ringforts were enclosed farmsteads, typically of early medieval date, where a family and their livestock lived within a defended boundary. Most were ringed by a bank and a fosse, the external ditch that accompanied the earthen wall. Here, that ditch has either silted in completely or was never dug, leaving no trace at ground level.

The site sits on a south-facing terrace, a practical choice by whoever built it; south-facing ground catches more warmth and light, and a broad level platform on a hillside would have offered a degree of natural elevation without full exposure to the weather. The raised interior measures roughly 35 metres in diameter, enclosed by an earthen bank about 5.6 metres wide but only around 0.3 metres high internally, which gives a sense of how much the monument has settled and spread over the centuries. Along the arc running from the south-east to the north-east, even that bank disappears, replaced by a scarp, a low natural or artificial slope, standing about 0.4 metres on its outer face. Where the original entrance once broke through all of this is no longer clear; the ground has shifted or been worked too many times for any gap to read as deliberate.