Raths, or ringforts, are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, with an estimated fifty thousand once scattered across the island, yet familiarity has done little to diminish how strange they look when you encounter one in a field, a grassy ring that refuses to be absorbed back into the ordinary ground around it.

Ringforts were the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, in use roughly from the fifth to the twelfth century. A typical example consisted of one or more circular earthen banks, sometimes reinforced with a ditch, enclosing a central area where a family would have kept their dwelling and, crucially, their cattle overnight. The bank was a statement of status as much as a defensive measure, and the size and number of enclosing rings often reflected the wealth of the household within. Cloonmonad itself is a Gaelic place name, and like most Mayo townlands it carries a long continuity of human settlement that predates any written record of it.