This is a rath, the most common type of early medieval settlement in Ireland, typically the enclosed farmstead of a single family or small community. What makes this particular example worth pausing over is the detail that survives: a substantial bank of earth and stone, nearly a metre and a half wide, encircling an interior roughly 33 metres across at its longest axis, with no fosse, the surrounding ditch that most comparable sites would have, suggesting the builders here relied on the height and mass of the bank alone for their enclosure.

The original entrance appears to have faced south-east, a common orientation in Irish ringforts, and it is near this point that the site yields its most intriguing feature. Cut into the interior is the entrance to a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber built during the early medieval period, generally used for cold storage and possibly as a place of refuge. Souterrains are not uncommon companions to ringforts across Ireland, but their presence always adds a layer to what might otherwise seem a simple earthwork. The people who lived here evidently invested considerable effort not only in the visible enclosure above ground but in what lay beneath it.