At Ballygroman in County Cork, a ringfort that once measured roughly forty metres across now exists in neither form. The earthwork has been levelled entirely, leaving no visible trace on the surface of the pasture where it once stood. What we know of it comes largely from the Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1842, where it appears as a hachured circular enclosure, the standard cartographic shorthand of the period for a raised or embanked ring. Even then, the southern arc of the enclosure was already being eaten into by a farmyard and its buildings.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths when formed from earthen banks and ditches, are among the most common archaeological monument types in Ireland, with tens of thousands recorded across the country. Most date to the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries, and served as enclosed farmsteads for a single family or small community. The bank and ditch offered a degree of security and also marked social status. The one at Ballygroman sat on a natural platform to the north of what became a farmyard, a position that would have given it some elevation and visibility in the surrounding landscape. By the time the Ordnance Survey cartographers recorded it in the nineteenth century, the encroachment of agricultural buildings had already begun its slow erasure. At some point after that first mapping, the remaining earthwork was levelled completely.