That is not a metaphor or an approximation; the structure was recorded during a preliminary inspection that year, and by the time anyone returned, it was gone, turned under by agricultural machinery.

A rath, to use the Irish term, is an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically circular and bounded by an earthen bank and a surrounding ditch known as a fosse. This one was univallate, meaning it had a single line of enclosure rather than the double or triple rings that mark higher-status sites. Its bank was roughly four metres wide at the base and still stood, at the time of inspection, about sixty centimetres high on the exterior face. The fosse outside it measured about two and a half metres across and nearly half a metre deep. What made the site somewhat unusual, even before its destruction, was the presence of numerous visible stones, suggesting the interior of the enclosure may once have been stone-lined, which would point to a more carefully constructed dwelling than earthworks alone would imply. The entrance appeared to have faced east, a common orientation for such sites. The whole structure sat within a very marshy field, and that waterlogged setting may well have been the reason it lasted as long as it did, the ground being too wet for convenient tillage until more modern drainage made cultivation viable. The internal diameter ran to about 32.7 metres, a reasonable size for a middling early medieval farmstead. C. Toal documented it in the North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995, drawing on that 1990 visit, and the entry has since served as the primary record of something that no longer physically exists.