A rath, sometimes called a ringfort, is a type of enclosed farmstead built predominantly during the early medieval period in Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands of them survive across the country, some reduced to faint cropmarks visible only from the air, others still rising as substantial earthworks. The one at Drinaghan belongs to this quiet category of monument, present in the land but largely unannounced.

Ringforts were the everyday settlements of farming families in early medieval Ireland, enclosed by one or more earthen banks and ditches to protect livestock and deter opportunistic raiding. The circular form was practical rather than ceremonial, though over time these sites accumulated folklore, becoming associated in local tradition with the otherworld and the aos sí. In Connacht, where the land alternates between drumlin country, bog, and limestone plain, many such enclosures have survived simply because the ground around them was never worth the trouble of levelling. Sligo's landscape in particular retains a remarkable density of prehistoric and early medieval monuments, set against a backdrop shaped by glacial geology and centuries of pastoral farming.