It is not especially large, measuring roughly 28 metres across its longer axis, and its enclosing bank is poorly preserved, worn down by time and the slow creep of wet ground. But the shape is still there, and that shape is the point. This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that once defined rural life across early medieval Ireland, typically dating from somewhere between the sixth and tenth centuries. Thousands survive in various states of decay, and this is one of two within a few hundred metres of each other in Windtown townland alone.

What makes this particular example quietly interesting is its detail rather than its grandeur. The inner bank contains a gap about 1.3 metres wide on the west-south-west side, which may mark the original entrance, the point through which people and livestock would have passed in and out of a defended domestic space. A short stretch of an outer earthen bank at the western foot of the embankment appears to be a later addition, possibly constructed after 1700, suggesting that someone found a use for the site long after its original function had lapsed. A depression in the north-eastern part of the raised interior is put down to modern disturbance rather than anything earlier. The townland boundary itself, formed by a stream to the north, separates this spot from the neighbouring townland of Loughanstown Lower or Slievelahan, a small reminder that even seemingly arbitrary lines on a map can carry considerable age.