The site is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was the standard form of rural settlement in Ireland from roughly the early centuries AD through to the Norman period. These were essentially enclosed farmsteads, their earthen banks defining a domestic territory as much as a defensive one. At Cummeen, that bank survives to a height of around 2.1 metres and spans roughly 4 metres in width, enclosing a roughly circular area approximately 54 metres in diameter. What makes the situation quietly odd is how thoroughly the farm has grown into the monument rather than around it.

Both the 1837 and 1940 editions of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps record the enclosure as a large, roughly circular feature, which at least confirms that its basic shape was still legible well into the twentieth century. Today, the northern to south-eastern arc of the bank is the portion that survives most clearly, though it is largely smothered in brambles and requires some effort to read as an earthwork at all. The south-eastern section incorporates a break in the bank, around 3.25 metres wide, which now serves as a gate into the farmyard. Whether this gap is original or was made to suit agricultural access at some later point is not recorded. The north-western and south-western sectors, where the farmyard itself sits, have been largely lost to that occupation. At the centre of the interior stands a rectangular building, suggesting the enclosed space has been in continuous practical use for some considerable time.