A rath, or ringfort, is an enclosed circular settlement typical of early medieval Ireland, generally defined by a bank and sometimes a surrounding ditch. What makes this particular example quietly puzzling is the evidence of deliberate concealment: an external fosse, a defensive ditch that appeared clearly on Ordnance Survey mapping as far back as 1930, had apparently been infilled by the time of an inspection in 1996. The inspectors noted a band of unusually soft earth encircling the monument, up to eight metres wide on the western side, suggesting the ditch had been filled in relatively recently. The fosse is no longer visible at all.

The rath itself measures roughly 31 metres east to west and 32 metres north to south, a slightly raised circular platform whose earthen bank survives well on the eastern half, standing about a metre high internally and just over a metre on the outer face. On the western side it is reduced to a low scarp. Small stones protrude from the inner face of the bank on the north-east and east. Inside, the ground is not level: a stony scarp running roughly north to south divides the interior, with the western portion sitting about a metre higher than the eastern half. A row of stones barely breaking the surface runs east to west from the bank to this central divide, suggesting some kind of internal partition within the western area. Two gaps in the bank, one at the east measuring about two metres wide and another at the north-west, are now blocked with boulders; the eastern gap is the more plausible candidate for the original entrance. The perimeter is lined with ash and hawthorn, and the interior has gathered holly, ash, and brambles over time, along with heaps of field clearance stones piled along the southern bank.

This site does not stand in isolation. A further confirmed rath lies 230 metres to the east, and a probable one sits 120 metres to the north, hinting that this low rise in Garrycloonagh was once a more densely settled landscape than the open grazing land visible today.