The trees are a relatively recent addition, but the structure around them is anything but. This is a rath, a type of ringfort built in early medieval Ireland, typically between the sixth and tenth centuries, as a defended farmstead for a family of some local standing. What makes this particular example quietly interesting is the combination of its construction: an earthen bank reinforced with stone facing on its outer side, a detail that suggests a builder with both the labour and the material to hand.

The enclosure measures roughly thirty metres in diameter, with its surrounding bank still rising to about 1.9 metres in height. That kind of preservation, after well over a thousand years in agricultural land, is not something to take for granted. Raths were once so numerous across the Irish countryside that they became embedded in folklore as the dwelling places of the fairy folk, a reputation that paradoxically helped protect many of them from being levelled by farmers wary of disturbing the otherworld. The stone-faced outer bank here is a practical feature, helping to stabilise the earthwork against erosion and livestock pressure, but it also marks a step up from the most basic form of such enclosures, which relied on earth alone.