Within roughly 355 metres, three further raths occupy the same stretch of countryside, one to the south-south-east, one to the north-north-west, and one to the north-east. Whatever early medieval community once farmed and organised itself around Pollronahan Beg, it was not a solitary household doing so from a single defended enclosure.

A rath is an earthen ringfort, the type of enclosed farmstead that tens of thousands of Irish families occupied during the early medieval period, roughly from the fifth to the twelfth century. This one sits on top of a natural knoll, taking full advantage of a pronounced fall of ground to the north and east. The enclosure is subcircular, measuring about 25.7 metres north-north-west to south-south-east and roughly 24 metres across in the other direction. Rather than a constructed bank and ditch in the conventional sense, the defensive line here is an earthen scarp, in places sharpened by the natural steepness of the hill. On the north-east to south-east side the scarp drops about two metres to a narrow terrace, itself bounded by a near-vertical outer scarp. On the western arc, a similar terrace about four and a half metres wide descends to an old laneway that still skirts the base of the knoll. A gap of about two and a half metres in the scarp on the south-south-east side, oriented toward a more gradual slope, is the likely position of the original entrance. Inside, the western half of the enclosed area contains a grassed-over hollow with a few stones breaking the surface alongside a low mound of earth and stone, while a shallower stony hollow sits in the eastern half. These interior features hint at structures whose character is now difficult to read from the surface alone. The southern section has suffered some quarrying, a common fate for raised earthworks that made convenient sources of stone and fill in the post-medieval period. The Pollagh River lies about 360 metres to the north-west, and a working farmyard occupies ground just 20 metres from the monument.