It is easy to miss, sitting below the crest of the hill in what has been tillage land, its outlines softened by vegetation and time. But look closely and the logic of the place becomes clearer: an earthen bank, still standing around 0.7 metres high on the interior and stone-faced in sections, traces the perimeter of what would have been a protected enclosure, with an external fosse, a defensive ditch, running to the northeast and northwest and reaching a depth of around 0.75 metres.

This is a rath, the most common type of ringfort found across Ireland, typically dating to the early medieval period between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries. Raths were not military fortifications in the conventional sense but rather enclosed farmsteads, the earthen banks and ditches serving to mark status, keep livestock in, and deter opportunistic raiding. Thousands survive across the country in various states of preservation, though many have been levelled by centuries of agriculture. The Ummera example is notable for retaining both its bank and fosse, even if heavily overgrown, and for the partial stone-facing of its bank, which suggests some investment of effort and local material in its original construction. The south-facing aspect of the slope would have been a deliberate choice, maximising light and shelter for whoever lived and worked within it.