Within a few hundred metres, a standing stone rises to the east, the remains of a chapel lie to the south, a bog stretches away to the west, and the ringfort sits at the northern edge of a complex of earthworks covering roughly seven hectares. That accumulation of features, spread across a single gentle slope in County Westmeath, suggests a landscape that was organised, layered, and repeatedly returned to over a very long span of time.

A rath, as ringforts of this earthen type are commonly known, was typically a circular or near-circular enclosure defined by a bank and outer ditch, used in early medieval Ireland as a farmstead or the enclosed residence of a family of some local standing. The Tyfarnham example is sub-circular in plan, measuring approximately 39 metres north to south and 37 metres east to west. Its earthen bank survives best along the western and northern arcs, while elsewhere it has been reduced to little more than a scarp, partly interrupted by a later field fence running northwest to southeast. Inside the enclosure, the ground slopes gently in the same direction, and a low bank in the southwest quadrant projects inward from the main enclosure bank for reasons that remain unclear. Whether it represents a later addition, an internal division, or something structural is unknown.

The ringfort is the northernmost element of the wider earthwork complex, and that positioning, overlooking the spread of features below it on a south-southeast facing slope, gives it a quality of deliberate placement rather than accident. The standing stone 40 metres to the east predates the early medieval period entirely, pointing to activity here long before the rath was ever raised.