The site at Cuiltaboolia is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was typically a circular earthen enclosure used as a defended farmstead during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. What makes this one quietly unusual is the way ordinary domestic life has simply continued within it: the enclosure's interior, which once would have sheltered timber buildings, an animal pen, and the household of a farming family more than a thousand years ago, now contains a modern farmhouse.

The enclosure was recorded on both the 1837 and 1891 editions of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map as a circular feature with an external diameter of approximately 35 metres. It sits on the lower south-west-facing slope of a drumlin, one of those smooth, elongated hills shaped by glacial deposits, which provided a degree of natural elevation and drainage. Of the original earthwork, an arc running roughly south-west to north-west still survives, measuring around 27 metres in length, with the curving scarp ranging in height from 0.6 to 1.7 metres. That the feature appeared consistently across two separate Ordnance Survey editions more than fifty years apart suggests it was already a recognisable earthwork long before any formal archaeological interest caught up with it.