It is easy to miss, or to mistake for a natural feature of the land, but its dimensions, roughly 31 metres north to south and 28.5 metres east to west, suggest something deliberate and ancient. A line of trees grows along the top of the surviving bank, which rises about a metre above the surrounding pasture, giving the enclosure an odd, quietly formal quality in an otherwise unremarkable agricultural landscape.

This is a rath, a type of ringfort built from earth and commonly used across Ireland during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Raths typically served as enclosed farmsteads, the bank and any accompanying ditch marking out a protected space for a family, their livestock, and their dwellings. The Slishmeen example has fared reasonably well over the centuries, though the north-east to southern arc of the bank has been levelled at some point, and the remaining sections are broken in numerous places by farm animals moving through the pasture. This combination of partial survival and ongoing agricultural use is entirely typical: thousands of ringforts remain across Ireland in various states of wear, continuing to sit within working farmland much as they always did.