In a field in Ballyteige Lower, County Limerick, what was once a rath, a ringfort of the kind that served as a farmstead and enclosure for an early medieval family, now announces itself only as a slight hollow in otherwise level ground. The earthwork that once defined it is gone, levelled during land reclamation work, leaving a shallow depression as the sole indication that something of significance once stood here.

Ringforts, known variously as raths or lios depending on local usage, were typically circular enclosures bounded by one or more earthen banks and ditches. They were built and occupied primarily between the seventh and twelfth centuries, though some are older, and they functioned as the domestic settlements of farming families across early medieval Ireland. Tens of thousands once existed. Many have been lost to exactly the kind of reclamation that occurred here in Ballyteige Lower. What makes this particular site notable, in a quietly uncomfortable way, is that the destruction happened in spite of a preservation order. The monument is listed as subject to a preservation order under the National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2014, recorded as PO no. 5/1978, meaning it had legal protection in place. The survey entry was compiled by Denis Power and uploaded in August 2011, by which point the levelling had already occurred.

The site lies in reclaimed pasture, and there is little to guide the eye once you are there. The hollow that now defines the monument's footprint is subtle enough that it might be missed entirely in dry summer conditions when the ground has hardened and grasses grown uniformly tall. Visiting after rain, or in the lower light of autumn when shadows are longer and slight variations in topography become more readable, gives the best chance of making out the depression. The site is not a visitor attraction in any formal sense and has no interpretive signage, but it appears in the national record and carries legal status as a protected monument, which means the hollow in the field is, legally at least, still treated as the thing it no longer visibly is.