The rath at Radrum in County Monaghan is one such case. A rath is a ringfort, the most common monument type in the Irish landscape, typically consisting of a circular earthen bank and an outer ditch enclosing a domestic settlement from the early medieval period. The one at Radrum was already a quiet presence when surveyors came to look at it in 1968, sitting on a shelf partway down a south-west-facing slope, its original form softened into grass and rushes.

When it was recorded in 1968, the fort measured roughly 36 metres on its longer axis and 31 metres across, making it a modest but not unusual example of the type. It retained a recognisable earthen bank and an outer fosse, the shallow defensive ditch that typically accompanied such enclosures, though the fosse had been lost on the south-east to south-west arc. The original entrance, nearly ten metres wide at its base, faced south-south-east, an orientation that would have caught the morning light. By 2000, however, the rath had been removed entirely, almost certainly through agricultural clearance. What the 1968 record captured was, without knowing it at the time, a last look at something already on its way out.