The one at Barnaboy, in County Galway, is a different proposition. Set in level pastureland, it has been so thoroughly absorbed into the working countryside that only fragments of its original form remain above ground.

A rath, as these enclosures are also known, was typically a circular or oval earthen bank enclosing a farmstead, used from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. The Barnaboy example was never large, measuring approximately 28 metres across its longest axis and 21 metres across the shorter. What survives is partial: a low bank runs from the south-west around to the west-north-west, and a scarp, a slight edge or drop in the ground rather than a built-up mound, continues from there around to the north-east. The eastern and southern portions of the enclosure have fared worst. A curving field boundary cuts across those sections, and a stream running just to the east of that boundary has further disrupted whatever earthwork once completed the circuit. The result is a monument that exists in outline rather than substance, legible on paper more than on the ground.