At Clooneen in County Galway, a slight, almost imperceptible rise in a grass field on an east-facing slope is all that remains of what was once a substantial enclosed settlement. Without knowing where to look, and what to look for, a person could walk across it entirely unaware.

A rath is a type of ringfort, the most common early medieval monument in Ireland, typically consisting of a circular or subcircular area enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches. They served as farmsteads, and sometimes as higher-status residences, for families living in Ireland roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. The Clooneen example was recorded on the third edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, published in 1920, which identified a subcircular enclosure measuring approximately 54 metres on its northwest to southeast axis and around 47 metres northeast to southwest. Those are considerable dimensions, comparable to many surviving raths elsewhere in Connacht. By the time any detailed ground survey was carried out, however, a field boundary running northwest to southeast had cut across the monument at two points, and the earthworks themselves had been all but levelled. The cartographic record from 1920 remains the clearest evidence that anything was ever here at all.