The bank, standing around two metres high and enclosing a circular area some thirty-six metres across, is what remains of a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort. These were the most common form of settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically serving as enclosed farmsteads for a single family and their livestock, the bank and sometimes an outer ditch providing a degree of security and a clear boundary of domestic space.

What makes this particular example quietly interesting is the small detail recorded by P. J. Hartnett in 1939: at that time, the interior of the enclosure was under tillage. The ground that had once been the yard and living space of an early medieval household was being actively farmed. Since then, the interior has reverted to pasture, and the site now sits in the surrounding rough grazing land, considerably less disturbed than it once was. The shift from tillage back to grass is not unusual for sites like this across Cork and the wider country, where agricultural intensification in the mid-twentieth century gave way to different land-use patterns.