That restriction means the rath, a type of early medieval enclosed farmstead typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, exists in the archaeological record as a shape seen from the air and a shrinking outline on successive maps, rather than anything a researcher has been able to walk around and examine.

The successive Ordnance Survey maps tell a quietly unsettling story of attrition. On the 1842 six-inch sheet, the enclosure appears as a hachured roughly circular feature with a diameter of around 45 metres, a substantial footprint suggesting a once-significant earthwork. By 1905 the same feature is recorded at approximately 35 metres across. By 1937 it has reduced further to around 20 metres, now described as a raised area enclosed by a fosse, the term for a ditch that would originally have run around the outside of the bank. Whether this shrinkage reflects genuine erosion and degradation of the earthwork over those decades, differences in surveying conventions, or some combination of both, is difficult to say without ground-level access. An aerial photograph does confirm that an upstanding circular enclosure remains visible, so something of the structure survives.