These are raths, a type of circular earthwork enclosure, typically formed by a bank and sometimes a ditch, that served as farmsteads or defended homesteads throughout early medieval Ireland. What makes this pair at Dooneen quietly compelling is not grandeur but accumulation: two adjoining sites, a stream that doubles as a natural defence, and inside one of the enclosures, the buried remains of an actual dwelling.

The western rath is the more obscured of the two. Its bank survives best on the western and northern sides, rising 1.25 metres on the outside, though a field wall has been built across its southern sector, burying part of the earthwork beneath later agricultural infrastructure. Inside, the overgrown circular interior measures roughly 22 metres north to south by 17.5 metres east to west. In 1927, a scholar named Ua Riain noted a smaller circle within the enclosure, approximately 5.8 metres in diameter and close to the western bank, which he identified as a probable hut site. He also recorded a souterrain on the eastern side, a souterrain being an underground stone-lined passage associated with early medieval settlement, sometimes used for storage or refuge. Neither feature can now be located on the ground. The eastern rath is better preserved. It retains an external fosse, a defensive ditch, running from north to southeast, averaging 3.5 metres wide, with the enclosing bank rising nearly two metres above it. The stream curves around the southern perimeter here and appears to have served as a natural complement to the earthwork defences. Inside, a sod-covered circular hut still survives in rough outline, measuring around 6.1 by 4.2 metres internally, its walls averaging over a metre in width, with an entrance gap facing east.