The oval rath at Rahally is a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead common across early medieval Ireland, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and a fosse, the ditch dug to provide the material for those banks. Here there are two banks with a fosse between them, a configuration suggesting some degree of status or a felt need for additional protection. Its dimensions, roughly 34.7 metres east to west and 29.6 metres north to south, place it comfortably within the range of a prosperous early medieval homestead. But the rath does not stand alone on the ridge; it sits at the centre of a hillfort, a much larger enclosure that predates the ringfort tradition and belongs, in most Irish cases, to the Iron Age or earlier. The relationship between the two monuments implies this spur of high ground was considered significant across a very long span of time.

The interior of the rath preserves traces of what were probably buildings, rectangular outlines roughly ten metres long and four and a half metres wide, now visible only as low, grass-covered banks of stone. These ghostly footprints of possible houses give the site an unusual density of detail for a field monument of this kind. A further enclosure was identified immediately to the north-east of the ringfort, adding another layer to what appears to be a small complex of related features rather than a single isolated structure. The site's position on a spur of the Kilreekill ridge, with open views across a wide arc to the north, west, and south-west, would have made it a natural focal point in the landscape, easy to defend and hard to approach unobserved.