This one sits in flat pastureland in Carrowkeel, County Galway, where the landscape offers no cliffs, no hilltops, and no theatrical backdrop, and yet the structure has persisted quietly across many centuries, its double-bank enclosure still legible in the grass.

The site is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed settlement that was built in enormous numbers across Ireland, mostly during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. They typically functioned as farmsteads, the banks and ditches marking the boundary of a household's space rather than any serious military fortification. This particular example measures 38.2 metres in diameter and is defined by two concentric earthen banks with an intervening fosse, the ditch cut between them to add height to the inner bank and provide a degree of drainage. Documented by Athy in 1914 and again by McCaffrey in 1952, the site was recorded as being in fair condition, and the inner bank and fosse survive along a substantial arc running from the south through west to the north-east. The outer bank is visible along the north-west to north-east stretch. The fact that two banks were built here rather than one suggests a household of some local standing; double-banked raths are generally associated with higher-status occupants in the early medieval social hierarchy.