The one at Ballycurrane in County Tipperary is a modest example, yet its very ordinariness is part of what makes it worth attention. It sits in gently undulating poor pasture on the western side of a possible field system, its circular outline still legible after well over a thousand years of agricultural use around it.

A ringfort, or rath, was typically the enclosed homestead of an early medieval farming family, most dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. The enclosing earthwork was less a military fortification than a statement of ownership and a practical barrier against livestock straying or predators entering. At Ballycurrane the remains follow this pattern closely. The raised, roughly circular platform measures about eighteen metres on its north-east to south-west axis and sixteen metres across on the north-west to south-east axis. It is enclosed by a gently sloping earthen scarp, around 3.4 metres wide and still standing some 0.4 metres above the surrounding ground, with a broad external fosse, a defensive ditch, running around the outside. That fosse measures roughly 3.75 metres across overall, with a base width of two metres and a depth of 0.2 metres, shallow now but once a more meaningful obstacle. The interior of the enclosure remains level and clear of overgrowth, preserving the basic geometry of the original layout despite the passage of centuries.