It is, in fact, a rath, the everyday Irish term for an earthen ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that was built in its thousands across Ireland during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. What makes this one slightly arresting is the way the land itself has done much of the work of preservation: a steep outer scarp, somewhere between two and three metres high on its roadward side, gives the monument a sharp, deliberate edge that reads as distinctly unnatural once you know what you are looking at.

The raised platform measures approximately thirty-two metres in diameter and is enclosed by an earthen scarp, the outer face of what was once a defensive or enclosing bank. In a typical ringfort, this bank would be accompanied by a fosse, a surrounding ditch dug to provide the material for the bank itself, but no fosse is visible here. The scarped edge wraps around the site from the north-west to the south-west, while the steeper drop to the south-east overlooks the public road. Benbulbin School sits directly against the outer base of the scarped edge on the eastern side, meaning the monument is hemmed in by later development on at least one face. A drystone wall, oriented roughly east to west, bisects the interior of the site, a later addition that cuts across whatever original organisation the enclosed space once had. The original entrance to the rath, which in comparable sites is often a simple gap in the bank, is no longer recognisable.