A rath, or ringfort, is a circular enclosure typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, built during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and used as a farmstead or dwelling for a family of some local standing. Ireland has tens of thousands of them, yet each one occupies a specific patch of ground chosen by someone, for reasons that made sense to them at the time, and that patch in Oughterard is no different.

Clare as a county is particularly well furnished with such monuments, its limestone plains and low drumlins having been settled intensively during the early medieval centuries when ringfort construction was at its height. The townland name Oughterard, derived from the Irish "Uachtar Ard" meaning upper height, suggests elevated or prominent ground, which would be consistent with the kind of location favoured for a rath, where visibility and drainage both mattered. Beyond that, the documentary record for this particular enclosure remains thin, and the earthwork itself holds whatever local history it contains largely to itself.