What makes the setting particularly striking is the turlough to the south-east, one of those distinctive limestone-karst phenomena found across the west of Ireland, where fields flood in winter and dry out again by summer, the water rising and falling through fissures in the rock below. The rath sits on an east-facing slope, positioned so that anyone inside it would have had a clear view across that shifting, unreliable water body.

The earthwork is a rath, the most common type of ringfort in Ireland, typically built during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, as a defended farmstead for a single family or small household. This one is subcircular in plan, measuring approximately 37.5 metres north to south and 33 metres east to west. It is defined by two concentric earthen banks with a fosse, or ditch, running between them; a double-banked arrangement generally signals a site of some local status, as the extra circuit of bank and ditch required considerably more labour to construct and maintain. A possible entrance, around five metres wide, faces east, which aligns the approach with the morning light and with the slope of the hill below. Earthen banks radiating outward from the monument to the south-east and south may have been associated with the original enclosure, perhaps forming field boundaries or stock enclosures. Inside the ring, a subrectangular hollow in the south-western section appears to be of modern origin, a later intrusion into what would otherwise be a largely intact interior.