In rough pastureland near Loughcurra, Co. Galway, among outcroppings of the grey limestone that defines so much of this part of Connacht, a ringfort once stood that has now left no visible trace whatsoever on the ground beneath it.

What we know comes almost entirely from the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, which record a subcircular enclosure measuring roughly 37 metres north to south and 32 metres east to west. The siting and the cartographic evidence together raise the possibility that this was a cashel, the term used for a ringfort built from stone rather than earthen banks, common in areas where limestone lies close to the surface and loose rubble is easier to gather than soil. Cashels were typically farmsteads of the early medieval period, enclosing a household and its outbuildings within a defensive wall. In the limestone-rich terrain around Loughcurra, such a construction would have made practical sense. Whether the stones were robbed out for field walls over the centuries, or whether the enclosure simply degraded and was absorbed back into the pasture, the record does not say. The OS surveyors caught it at a moment when enough remained to be mapped; that moment is now long past.