The one at Derrynagarragh in County Westmeath still occupies that kind of ground, sitting just below the summit of a prominent hill on a south-facing slope with wide views in every direction. What makes it quietly melancholy rather than impressive is how much of it has gone. The enclosing bank, which once described a sub-circular area roughly 43 metres across from north-west to south-east and 51 metres from north-east to south-west, has been almost completely levelled along its north-eastern, southern, and south-western arc. Only the western to north-north-eastern stretch retains anything resembling its original profile, and even there the fosse, the outer ditch that would have reinforced the bank, is described as slight.

Ringforts of this kind were the dominant form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, broadly from the fifth to the twelfth centuries, and thousands survive across the country in varying states of repair. Most were farmsteads rather than military installations, the bank and fosse serving to manage livestock and mark out a household's space as much as to repel attack. At Derrynagarragh, the interior carries traces of cultivation ridges, the low parallel undulations left by spade or plough tillage, suggesting the enclosed ground was worked at some point, though whether this dates to the fort's original occupation or to later agricultural use is impossible to say from surface evidence alone. A separate earthwork survives approximately 430 metres to the north-west, hinting that this hillside once held more than one focus of activity.