The one at Doonally in County Sligo is a different kind of remnant. What remains is a semi-circular raised area, roughly 24 metres across at its widest, enclosed by a narrow bank of earth and stone no more than three and a half metres wide and barely thirty centimetres high on the interior. The southern and south-western arc of that enclosure has been quarried away, and where the bank once ran, an irregular ridge of spoil has been dumped in its place. The original entrance is no longer identifiable.

A rath, as this type of enclosure is technically classified, is an early medieval farmstead, typically dating from roughly the sixth to the twelfth century, defined by one or more earthen banks and, usually, an external ditch or fosse. Here, no fosse is visible at ground level, which may reflect the effects of the quarrying rather than an original absence. The site sits on a gentle south-facing slope in undulating pasture, a setting that would have made good practical sense to whoever built it, offering drainage, aspect, and visibility across the surrounding land. What the quarrying removed was not incidental; it has taken with it the clearest evidence of how the enclosure was originally shaped and where its occupants passed in and out.

The Doonally rath is most interesting precisely because of its damaged condition. It shows how comprehensively agricultural and industrial activity, even at a relatively modest local scale, can reduce an earthwork that might once have been the centre of a family's landholding to something barely legible in the grass.