The example at Barnagore in County Tipperary sits on a break in a south-west-facing slope, just back from the brow of a hill and surrounded by pasture. A ringfort, or rath, is essentially a circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and, typically, an outer ditch; these were the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, home to families of some local standing and built for a combination of security and social display rather than full military defence.

This one is modest but clearly legible in the landscape. The enclosed area measures roughly 23 metres north to south and 22.2 metres east to west, making it a fairly typical domestic scale. The enclosing bank is about 3.6 metres wide and stands between just over a metre on the interior and up to 2.14 metres on the exterior, the variation in external height reflecting how the slope falls away from the structure. Around the outside runs a U-shaped fosse, the ditch that would originally have been cut to provide the material for the bank, here about 4.5 metres wide and surviving to a depth of around 0.66 metres. Traces of stone are visible within the earthen bank, suggesting at least some element of more durable construction. A gap of roughly 2.2 metres on the southern side marks where the original entrance once stood, a detail that ties in with the broader early medieval preference for south-facing openings, perhaps for warmth and light, perhaps for other reasons now harder to recover.