At Kilshanvy in County Galway, a ringfort once occupied a slight rise in what is now reclaimed grassland, and today there is nothing left to see. No earthen bank, no ditch, no hollow in the turf. The site survives only as a record, and as a faint impression of what was once a common feature of the Irish countryside.

Ringforts, sometimes called raths, were enclosed farmsteads typically built during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. They usually consisted of a circular area surrounded by one or more earthen banks and ditches, and served as the dwelling place of a farming family, providing some protection for livestock and inhabitants. The Kilshanvy example was recorded on the first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map as a circular enclosure approximately thirty-five metres in diameter, a modest but typical size. By the time the site came to be catalogued archaeologically, no visible surface trace survived. The land had been reclaimed and levelled, and whatever the enclosure once held had been absorbed back into working farmland.