On a north-facing slope of a low hillock at Carrownagarry, the remains of a circular earthen enclosure sit in a landscape that, within a radius of roughly 300 metres, contains at least three other related monuments. That kind of clustering is worth pausing over.

The site itself is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from around the fifth to the twelfth century. They were enclosed farmsteads, usually circular, defined by an earthen bank and an outer ditch. Here, the bank survives in overgrown form and the external fosse, the defensive ditch that once ran around the outside, can still be traced from the east around to the south. The enclosure measures roughly 33.5 metres in diameter, and a gap at the east-north-east may represent the original entrance, though the overall condition of the site is poor. About 250 metres to the west lies a separate enclosure, and roughly 300 metres to the west-south-west stand two further ringforts. Whether these sites were all occupied simultaneously, or represent settlement shifting across the same small territory over generations, is not something the earthworks alone can answer. But their proximity to one another points to a locality that was farmed and inhabited with some persistence, long before any written record of it exists.