What looks at first like a single, unremarkable rath, a circular enclosure of the kind found in their thousands across Ireland, is in fact one node in a dense cluster of conjoined and adjacent ringforts, field systems, and underground passages, all occupying ground identified by the antiquarian Thomas Westropp as the supposed site of Temaír Erann, the ancient tribal cemetery of the Ernai people.

The site was excavated between 1934 and 1935 by Seán P. Ó Ríordáin, who recorded it as Ringfort 1 of the Southern Group. The fort has an internal diameter of roughly 58 feet and was defended by a clay bank and external fosse, a ditch, the builders having had to cut down through the underlying red sandstone to achieve the necessary depth. Fragments of that same disintegrated sandstone were found incorporated into the bank itself, clearly re-used from the spoil. The entrance was notably unusual: the fosse ran continuously around the fort without a causeway break, meaning that access originally required some form of timber gangway across the ditch. Once inside, excavators found two pairs of post-holes flanking the gateway and a clay causeway lined with stepping stones leading toward the interior, the final stone being a large conglomerate block set conspicuously higher than the rest, possibly placed to impede anyone who had not been invited in. To the right of this internal path lay a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage that was once concealed behind a dry-stone revetment wall. Within the fort itself, three stone hearths were uncovered along with dense clusters of post-holes suggesting successive phases of occupation, the deposits so thin and overlapping that individual house plans proved almost impossible to distinguish. A repurposed quern stone, its central hole enlarged until it could serve as a door pivot, was among the more quietly telling finds.

The site lies within an agricultural landscape and sits in the southern quadrant of a wider archaeological complex on Slievereagh. The earthworks are subtle, denuded by centuries of grazing, and the significance of the ground is not immediately obvious from a distance. Visitors who know what they are looking for will find that walking the area slowly, and comparing what is visible above ground with the published excavation record, gives a clearer sense of how layered and long-lived this particular corner of Limerick's uplands really was.