The interior measures 25.3 metres in diameter, and it is wrapped by a substantial earthen bank and a wide, deep fosse, the term for the defensive ditch that rings the enclosure. What makes this particular example quietly compelling is the survival of a counterscarp bank, a secondary, outer bank sitting just beyond the fosse, which runs along the south-eastern, southern, and south-western arcs, as well as at the north-west. These outer banks are not always preserved at Irish ringforts, and their partial survival here gives a clearer picture of how elaborately layered such defences could be.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when built primarily of earth rather than stone, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, broadly from the fifth to the twelfth centuries. They served as enclosed farmsteads, the bank and fosse providing security for a household, its livestock, and its stores rather than functioning as military fortifications in any grand sense. The break in the bank at the north-east, accompanied by a causeway crossing the fosse, marks what was almost certainly the original entrance, a detail that speaks to deliberate planning and a concern for controlling movement into and out of the enclosure. The causeway would have bridged the ditch, funnelling visitors through a single, manageable point of access.