It is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built during the early medieval period, typically between the sixth and tenth centuries. Thousands of them survive across Ireland, but each one occupies its own particular piece of ground, chosen with care.

This one was positioned on the south-east-facing slope of the drumlin, a smooth glacially deposited hill, with the western shore of Lough Scur lying roughly 250 metres away. The interior of the enclosure measures approximately 34 metres north to south and 30.5 metres east to west, a subcircular space once bounded by a round-topped earthen bank that still survives, though modestly. At the north-east, the base of the bank spans about 2.9 metres, rising less than a metre on the exterior face. Outside the bank runs a fosse, a shallow ditch, around 4.2 metres wide at the top but now only about 15 centimetres deep. The whole monument has been further defined, and in places constrained, by a later field wall running along the north-east to south arc. Where the original entrance once stood is no longer apparent; the ground offers no clear answer.