At Cooltomin in County Limerick, a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead typically dating from the early medieval period, between roughly 500 and 1000 AD, survives in a state that is both legible and thoroughly absorbed into the working landscape around it. The enclosing bank has been folded into a field boundary, a farmer's wall running along its top for a stretch from the north-east around to the south-south-west, so that the ancient earthwork and the modern boundary have become, in practical terms, the same feature.

The site was recorded by Denis Power and uploaded to the national record in August 2011. The rath is roughly circular, measuring 32 metres north to south and 31.2 metres east to west, placing it within the typical size range for such enclosures. Its earth-and-stone bank is relatively modest in profile, standing only 0.4 metres above the interior ground level and 0.3 metres above the exterior, which suggests either considerable erosion over the centuries or that this was never one of the more substantial examples of its type. A later field wall, 0.65 metres high and 0.8 metres wide, has been built directly along the bank's crest across much of its circuit. The interior is level, which is characteristic of these sites, and the area sits on low-lying, gently undulating ground in a part of Limerick where limestone breaks through the surface in outcrops, giving the wider landscape a particular texture of pale rock and rough grazing.

The interior, littered with loose stones, is now covered by mature deciduous trees, which gives the enclosed area a distinctly different character from the open pasture around it. That canopy is worth looking for when approaching, since it marks the site more clearly than the low earthwork itself. The field wall running along the bank can make the rath's circuit difficult to read as a coherent whole at first glance, and it takes a moment of standing back to see where the ancient enclosure ends and the ordinary field boundary begins. Access would be across private farmland, so prior arrangement with the landowner is advisable.