That quiet accommodation is one of the more telling things about this ringfort in Ballywinterrourke, County Limerick. Ringforts, sometimes called raths, are the most common archaeological monument type in Ireland, built primarily during the early medieval period as enclosed farmsteads, the earthen bank and surrounding ditch providing a degree of protection for a family, their livestock, and their outbuildings. Most have been ploughed out, built over, or eroded to near-invisibility. This one, modest as it is, still holds its shape in the pasture.

The enclosure is roughly circular, with a diameter of 43 metres. An earthen bank defines the perimeter, standing at about 1.45 metres on the interior face and a more substantial 3.4 metres on the exterior, where the ground drops away into the fosse, the external ditch, which is 2.2 metres wide and 1.8 metres deep. At the south-south-west, the original entrance survives at 3 metres wide, its threshold flanked by boulders on either side, a small but telling detail that suggests some care in its original construction. A later, more functional intervention is visible too: a cattle break, 2.4 metres wide, has been knocked through the bank at the north, a practical gap made at some unknown point after the rath ceased to function as a settlement and became simply an obstacle in a working landscape. The record was compiled by Denis Power and uploaded to the Archaeological Survey of Ireland database in August 2011, with aerial photographs taken in March 2006.

The site sits on a gently west-facing slope just below the crest of a low rise, set within undulating pasture. Vegetation has done considerable work here: the bank is heavily masked by overgrowth, and the interior, though level underfoot, has clusters of nettles gathering around its inner edge, which is worth bearing in mind for anyone inclined to walk the perimeter closely. The bank is best preserved along the western to northern arc. Because the encircling field boundary follows the outer edge of the fosse, the footprint of the monument is actually preserved in the field pattern itself, readable from above in aerial photographs even where the earthwork has softened at ground level.