The example at Carrowtober in County Galway is a different kind of encounter. What remains here is essentially a ghost of a monument, a shallow scarp curving across a north-west-facing slope in grassland, tracing perhaps half the original circuit before fading into the field entirely.

The site is a rath, the earthen variety of ringfort, which would originally have consisted of a roughly circular bank and ditch enclosing a diameter of around 26 metres. These were the standard farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, built and occupied roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, and several tens of thousands once existed across the island. At Carrowtober, the defining scarp runs from the south-west through north to south-east, but no visible surface trace survives beyond that arc. The monument has been further compromised by a field bank cutting across it at the south, and a road running east to west along its northern edge. Centuries of agricultural activity have done the rest, leaving just enough of a curve in the ground to confirm something circular once stood here, without offering much more.