It suggests a place that has slipped, over centuries, from the centre of daily life to the edge of it, absorbed gradually into the working landscape until its original purpose became almost incidental.

The rath at Finnure, in County Galway, is a roughly circular enclosure about 45 metres in diameter, sitting in low-lying grassland. A rath is an early medieval farmstead enclosure, typically dating from somewhere between the sixth and tenth centuries, defined by a raised earthen bank and sometimes a surrounding ditch. This one has not fared especially well. The bank is broken by numerous gaps and is heavily overgrown with conifer trees, which both obscure and continue to disturb the earthwork. Two small sheds have been built up against the north-eastern stretch of the outer face, a detail that neatly captures the fate of many such sites across Ireland, where the ancient boundary becomes, in time, just another convenient edge to build against.