In Monanaleen, County Clare, a circular enclosure roughly 29 metres in diameter was recorded by the Ordnance Survey in 1842 and again on the Cassini edition of 1920, its outline faithfully marked in hachures both times. By 1998, when the site was physically inspected, there was nothing to see. The rise in the undulating improved pasture gave no hint that anything had ever been there.

The enclosure is described as probably a ringfort, which is a reasonable interpretation of a roughly circular earthwork of that diameter. Ringforts, known in Irish as raths or lios depending on the region, were enclosed farmsteads built predominantly during the early medieval period, typically between the fifth and twelfth centuries. They were usually defined by one or more banks and ditches, and served as both a domestic space and a means of securing livestock. What happened to this particular example is not recorded. Agricultural improvement, the same process that turned the surrounding land into the neat pasture visible today, is a common cause of such disappearances. Levelling, repeated ploughing, and land drainage have erased countless similar sites across Ireland, leaving only their cartographic ghosts. A second possible enclosure site lies approximately 110 metres to the north-north-west, suggesting this part of Monanaleen may once have held a small cluster of such settlements.