What looks like a gentle circular rise in the ground is in fact a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, an enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically built and occupied between roughly 500 and 1000 AD. Thousands of these structures survive across Ireland, yet each one represents a family, a household, a small working world that simply got on with things and left almost no written trace.

This particular example at Carrigthomas measures thirty-two metres in diameter, defined by an earthen bank still standing to about 1.1 metres in height. That the bank survives at all, in rough pasture rather than ploughed land, is a quiet stroke of luck. More intriguing still is the possible souterrain recorded in the interior. A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, usually associated with ringforts and thought to have served for storage, as a refuge, or both. The suggestion of one here adds a subterranean dimension to what is already a layered site, though its precise character remains uncertain.