This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, and thousands of them survive across Ireland, yet each one carries the trace of a decision made, perhaps fifteen hundred years ago, about where to build a life.

This particular example measures roughly 33.5 metres north to south and 34 metres east to west, making it a fairly typical specimen in terms of scale. Its enclosing earthen bank stands around 1.3 metres high, and on the southern arc, from south-southeast around to south-southwest, a fosse, essentially a defensive ditch dug to reinforce the bank, survives to a depth of about half a metre. A gap of four metres interrupts the bank on the eastern side, which most likely marks the original entrance. Ringforts of this type were the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, home to a single family or household, with the bank and fosse serving less as military fortifications and more as a boundary that kept livestock in and wolves or opportunistic neighbours out. A laneway still skirts the enclosure on both its eastern and western sides, which suggests the site has been worked around rather than through for a considerable stretch of time, a small sign of the practical respect that farming communities have long extended to these earthworks.