A rath is a ringfort, the most common monument type in the Irish countryside: a roughly circular area of raised ground, originally enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches, used as a farmstead and enclosure during the early medieval period, broadly the fifth to twelfth centuries. This one has been largely levelled, leaving a circular, saucer-shaped depression roughly 36 metres across, with only a faint trace of an outer fosse, the defensive ditch that would once have run around the bank, still visible to the north-west.

The Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842 recorded the site differently. At that date it appeared as a hachured circular enclosure with a diameter of around 30 metres, and a lime kiln was marked on its northern bank. Lime kilns were used to burn limestone down to quicklime for agricultural spreading, and their placement directly on or beside a ringfort bank was far from unusual; earthworks provided both ready material and a convenient elevated position. The presence of that kiln on the northern bank is likely one reason the monument is now so flat. A second ringfort survives roughly 160 metres to the east, suggesting this small area of north Cork once supported more than one enclosed farmstead in relatively close proximity.