The one at Meelick, in County Mayo, is more reticent. Its earthen enclosure is roughly D-shaped rather than the more familiar round form, with one notably straight side running along the west. The bank, where it survives best at the north and north-west, reaches less than a metre in height, and several gaps have been worn through it over the centuries. It is the kind of monument that rewards looking closely rather than glancing from a car window.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when they are earthen rather than stone-built, are among the most common early medieval monument types in Ireland, typically dating from roughly the sixth to the tenth century AD and thought to represent the enclosed farmsteads of farming families. This particular example sits on the level top of an east-west ridge, positioned at the break of slope on the north side, which gives it open views north-westward over low-lying pasture and north-eastward across Killala Bay. The interior, measuring approximately 21.5 metres east to west and 25 metres north to south, is largely level. In the south-west quadrant, a slightly raised circular feature about 7.5 metres in diameter may represent the remains of a hut site, the kind of internal structure where daily life would once have been conducted. Ninety metres to the north-north-east there is a further enclosure, suggesting that whatever community occupied this ridge did not do so in isolation.

The bank is most legible at the north-west, where it coincides with a natural fall of ground that amplified its effect, but elsewhere it has been worn down to a low, degraded line. The gaps at the east-south-east, west, and north-west may reflect centuries of agricultural use rather than any original entranceway. A large knoll sits immediately to the north-north-east, lending the surrounding landscape an uneven, quietly eventful quality that the modest earthworks alone do not fully convey.