Raths, also called ringforts, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically enclosing a farmstead and its associated buildings within a raised earthen bank. Most date from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, and Ireland still holds tens of thousands of them, though the majority have been levelled by centuries of agriculture. This one at Tubbrid survives well enough to read clearly in the landscape.

The monument occupies the western side of a small valley, positioned on a hillock that would have given its original occupants unobstructed sightlines in every direction, a practical advantage for a farming household keeping watch over livestock and land. The enclosure is roughly circular, with an internal diameter of around thirty-five metres. Its earthen bank survives to a height of between forty centimetres and sixty centimetres on the interior and around one and a half metres on the exterior, where the drop from the bank to the surrounding ground gives a clearer sense of the original boundary's intention. The entrance, at two and a half metres wide, sits in the western quadrant. A field boundary, built partly of earth and partly of stone, now runs alongside the monument, incorporating it into the working agricultural landscape in a way that is typical of how such sites have been quietly absorbed over generations. The interior of the enclosure is uneven, either following the natural contours of the hillock or, possibly, showing the effects of later quarrying activity, the two causes being difficult to separate without excavation.