The other half has vanished into the earth entirely, leaving only a curved arc of bank where there was once an enclosure, and nothing but ordinary farmland where the rest used to be. It is the kind of site that rewards a certain kind of attention, one that requires you to look at absence as much as presence.

The feature is a rath, the most common type of early medieval settlement enclosure in Ireland, typically consisting of an earthen bank and ditch built in a rough circle or oval to define a farmstead. This example, recorded by McCaffrey in 1952, is oval in plan and measures approximately 42 metres along its longer axis, running roughly north-north-west to south-south-east. What remains is a bank of earth and stone that curves from the south-south-west, around through the north, and continues to the east. From the east back around to the south-south-west, no surface trace survives at all. Whether the missing portion was levelled by ploughing over the centuries, or whether it was simply never as substantial to begin with, the record does not say. The site sits on a gentle rise in farmland, which was a typical choice for rath builders, offering a degree of drainage and visibility without committing to anything as dramatic as a hilltop.