But that unremarkable strip of tarmac bisects what was once a complete ringfort, and the story of how it came to be divided, and then diminished further still, is written more in absence than in anything you can see.

Ringforts, sometimes called raths, are the most common archaeological monument type in Ireland, earthen or stone enclosures that typically served as enclosed farmsteads during the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries. This one measured approximately thirty metres in diameter, a modest but not unusual size. It appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842 as a hachured circular enclosure, the standard cartographic shorthand of the time for an earthen bank or raised ring. By that point a road had already cut through it from east to west, so the fort was bisected even as it was being formally recorded. Later maps from 1905 and 1937 show only an arc of hachures to the north of the road, suggesting the southern half had already lost much of its definition, though the ground there remains uneven in a way that hints at buried structure. The northern portion fared worse: according to local information, whatever remained of the fort on that side was levelled in the late 1970s, leaving no visible surface trace.

What survives today is essentially a slightly irregular patch of pasture to the south of the road, the unevenness of the ground the only physical reminder that something once stood here in a continuous circle. The 1842 map, in a way, preserves more of the ringfort than the field does.