The structure is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was the most common form of rural enclosure in early medieval Ireland, typically used as a farmstead and defended by one or more earthen banks. This one measures roughly 23.6 metres from north to south, making it a modest example of the type, and what remains of it is fragmentary enough that it would be easy to walk past without registering what you were looking at.

The ringfort's survival has been complicated by the working landscape around it. A modern field bank has been built directly over part of the original structure, running from the south around to the west, effectively burying or merging with the ancient earthwork along that arc. A gap on the eastern side may also be a later interference rather than an original entrance. The result is a site where the early medieval and the relatively recent are difficult to separate without closer investigation. Paul Gosling's Archaeological Inventory of County Galway, published in 1993, records it as poorly preserved and subcircular in plan, which together suggest a structure that has been nudged and altered by generations of farmers with no particular interest in its age.