But the roughly circular enclosure, measuring about 28 metres east to west and 26 metres north to south, is a rath, the most common type of early medieval settlement monument in Ireland. Raths were typically built between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries as enclosed farmsteads, the bank and ditch combination serving both as a boundary marker and a modest defence for a family, their livestock, and their home.

What makes this particular example worth closer attention is the engineering involved in its construction. The interior has been deliberately cut into the hillside to the north, with the spoil apparently used to raise the southern side, effectively levelling the platform for habitation despite the natural slope. The enclosing bank, which stands only about 0.45 metres above the interior ground level but reaches 0.6 metres on the outside, is faced with stone on its external face, a detail that suggests some care in its original construction. To the south, a scarp of roughly one metre holds the edge, while to the north the ground drops sharply into the interior by a similar height. Taken together, these features describe a modest but considered piece of landscape engineering. By 1904, when the Ordnance Survey mapped the area at six-inch scale, the rath's outline had become absorbed into the field pattern, appearing as one of two adjoining roughly circular fields, its ancient geometry preserved almost by accident within the agricultural grid.