It is easy to read as a natural feature at first, a slight swelling in a field, but the geometry gives it away: roughly 36 metres north to south, 37 metres east to west, and ringed by an overgrown earthen bank that still stands around 1.3 metres high in places. A faint depression beyond the bank, the ghost of a fosse or defensive ditch, traces the outer edge of what was once a complete enclosure.

This is a rath, the most common monument type in the Irish countryside. Raths are earthen ringforts, enclosed farmsteads built and occupied primarily during the early medieval period, broadly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. They typically housed a single farming family of some local standing, the bank and fosse serving less as serious military fortification and more as a boundary marker, a statement of territory, and a deterrent to cattle raiders. The Skahanagh example follows the form closely: a near-circular enclosure with a single entrance gap, roughly two metres wide, facing west. The interior slopes gently downward in the same direction, towards the bogland the site overlooks. Perhaps most intriguing is what may lie beneath the eastern half of the interior: a possible souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber of the kind frequently found associated with ringforts, used variously for storage, refuge, or both.