Near Ballybunnion in north County Kerry, a rath once occupied the ground to the south-south-east of a neighbouring recorded ringfort. Nothing of it survives above the surface today, and were it not for earlier fieldwork, its existence might have gone unacknowledged altogether.

A rath is a roughly circular enclosure, typically defined by an earthen bank and outer ditch, built during the early medieval period as a farmstead or place of status. The qualifier "univallate" simply means it had a single such enclosure rather than the double or triple rings sometimes seen at more elaborate sites. C. Toal's North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995, recorded this one as a "possible" example even then, suggesting it was already difficult to read in the field. Whether it was levelled by centuries of agriculture, absorbed into field boundaries, or simply worn away, no trace now remains to confirm its original form or extent.

What makes it worth noting is precisely that absence. The Irish countryside holds hundreds of recorded sites that exist only as coordinates and cautious descriptions, their physical presence gone but their place in the record preserved. This Ballybunnion rath is one of them, a site that exists more as a historical possibility than a feature anyone could locate or visit, its outline legible only through the patience of those who looked before it was too late.