In Ballyquin More, County Clare, a circular enclosure, the kind of earthwork that in Ireland typically denotes a ringfort or enclosed farmstead from the early medieval period, survived long enough to be captured on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map, shown as a tree-filled ring partly emerging from surrounding woodland. By 1995, it was gone entirely, removed by quarrying before anyone could study it on the ground.

The enclosure had been formally catalogued twice, appearing in the Sites and Monuments Record in 1992 and again in the Record of Monuments and Places in 1994, the latter a statutory listing intended to afford legal protection to known archaeological sites. The fact that it was destroyed regardless is a reminder that inclusion in a record does not always translate into preservation on the ground. The OS six-inch map, surveyed in the nineteenth century, preserves the only image of what was there: a circular feature, wooded, sitting at the edge of a larger area of trees. Whether it was a ringfort, a cashel, or some other form of enclosed settlement, no investigation was completed before the quarrying obliterated it.