It was not woodland, at least not originally. Beneath the overgrowth lies a rath, the Irish term for a roughly circular or oval enclosure built from earthen banks, typically dating to the early medieval period and used as a farmstead or high-status residence. What makes this particular example quietly odd is how thoroughly the landscape has absorbed it: the trees and undergrowth have consumed something that was once a deliberate, engineered space, and by the time the 1907 OS map was drawn, it still appeared simply as a copse, unchanged in outline across more than seven decades of surveying.

The rath sits towards the northern end of a drumlin ridge running roughly north-north-east to south-south-west, with the ridge summit approximately 100 metres to the south-south-west. Drumlins, the elongated glacial hills that give Monaghan much of its distinctive corrugated landscape, were favoured locations for raths; the slight elevation offered drainage, visibility, and a degree of natural defence. The enclosure itself measures roughly 37.5 metres east to west and 35 metres north to south. At its northern edge, a slight earthen bank survives, around 1.5 metres wide and half a metre high, with an outer fosse or drainage ditch beyond it that is approximately 2.3 metres wide and half a metre deep. No entrance is now visible, and a later field bank cuts across the perimeter at the north-west, one of the small indignities that farmland management tends to inflict on ancient boundaries over the centuries.