The rath at Barefield in County Clare is one such monument, a circular earthwork enclosure of the kind that would have served as a defended farmstead, most likely between the fifth and twelfth centuries. A rath, to give it the Irish term, typically consists of one or more banks and ditches thrown up around a central living area, the whole thing functioning less like a military fortification and more like a combination of boundary marker, status symbol, and livestock enclosure.

Clare is particularly dense with these sites, its limestone-rich farmland having supported a relatively prosperous rural population throughout the early medieval period. Barefield itself lies in the parish of Ruan, a quiet agricultural townland that, like much of mid-Clare, sits in the transition zone between the open karst of the Burren to the north and the broader plain stretching towards Ennis to the south. The survival of a rath here, even in partial form, points to continuous if low-level habitation across many centuries. Local placename evidence often preserves the memory of these sites long after the earthworks themselves have been ploughed flat or reduced to a slight rise in a field, which makes any upstanding remains the more worth noting.