The ringfort at Rathattin in County Wicklow is one of them. Where an oval earthen enclosure once measured roughly 45 metres along its north-west to south-east axis and around 40 metres across, there is now simply a field. Nothing breaks the surface. A visitor standing there would have no way of knowing they were standing on the footprint of an early medieval homestead without first consulting an aerial photograph.

Ringforts, sometimes called raths, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a circular or oval area enclosed by one or more earthen banks, used to protect a family's dwelling and livestock. The Rathattin example followed this pattern, defined by a single earthen bank on gently undulating, low-lying ground. What distinguishes it now is its absence. The site appears to have been levelled in 1973, an act of agricultural clearance that was, unfortunately, not unusual during that period in Ireland, when land improvement schemes and changing farming practices led to the destruction of many such monuments before their significance was fully appreciated. The enclosure survived long enough to be captured on aerial photography, and it is those images alone that preserve its oval outline for the record.

There is nothing to see at ground level, and that is perhaps the honest point of interest here. The site sits somewhere in the quiet Wicklow countryside, its dimensions known, its shape preserved only in old photographs taken from the air, its physical presence gone for over fifty years.