What survives here is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built predominantly during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands of them once dotted the Irish countryside, and this one at Noughaval is among the more substantial examples in the area, measuring approximately 58 metres north to south and 52 metres east to west. A low earthen bank traces its perimeter, with faint traces of an external fosse, a defensive ditch, still legible on the ground.

When the site was formally described in 1978, its condition was already noted as poor, the bank worn down and patchy. Time has not been kind in the decades since. A field fence cuts across the north-western edge of the enclosure, a small but telling sign of how agricultural use gradually reshapes and erodes these monuments. Inside the enclosed area, the ground rises slightly towards the centre, and traces of cultivation ridges running north-east to south-west are still visible, suggesting the interior was ploughed at some point after the ringfort fell out of use. A second ringfort lies roughly 260 metres to the west, and the faint outline of what appears to be a third, now entirely levelled, is detectable only on aerial photography. That cluster is a reminder that these enclosures rarely existed in isolation; they were the basic unit of early Irish rural life, and finding several in close proximity is not unusual in the Irish midlands.

The earthwork sits on a slight natural rise, which would have given its original occupants a modest but meaningful advantage in terms of visibility across the surrounding farmland. From ground level today, that rise is easy to miss entirely, and the eroded bank demands some patience to read as a coherent structure. The interior ridges are more readily spotted in low, raking light, particularly in the early morning or late afternoon when shadows pick out subtle changes in the ground surface.