The example at Castlegar in County Galway is a case in point: a circular earthwork sitting quietly on a gentle north-facing slope, its outlines still legible but requiring some attention to read.

A rath, as this type of ringfort is known, was typically a farmstead of the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches to define territory and protect livestock. This particular example measures 33 metres in diameter. Its enclosing bank is best preserved from north-northeast to west-southwest, while elsewhere the boundary survives only as a scarp, a sloped drop in the ground rather than a raised bank. Outside the main enclosure, traces of a fosse, the ditch that would originally have been dug to throw up material for the bank, survive along the southern and north-northwestern arc. The site is described as being in fair condition, which in archaeological terms means recognisable but subject to the gradual attrition of farming, weather, and time.