Not abandoned, not ruined, but erased so thoroughly that no visible trace survives on the ground.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were typically circular enclosures defined by an earthen bank and ditch, used as farmsteads or defended homesteads during the early medieval period. Thousands of them once dotted the Irish countryside. The Ballinclemesig example was recorded on the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1842, which means surveyors could see it clearly enough to plot it. By the time a later edition was produced, it had disappeared from the cartographic record entirely, suggesting it was levelled sometime in the later nineteenth or early twentieth century. Land improvement schemes, agricultural intensification, and simple disregard for earthworks that inconvenienced a plough were all common causes of such losses across Ireland during this period. What remains now is only the map entry itself, a circle on paper marking a circle that no longer exists in earth.