It is the kind of collision between different eras of land use that happens quietly all over Ireland, and it tells you something about how easily these sites can be absorbed into the working landscape without quite disappearing.

The site is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was typically a circular earthen enclosure used as a farmstead or settlement during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. This particular example sits on the south-eastern edge of a low east-west ridge, set in rough pasture. The enclosed area measures around nineteen metres across its north-south axis. What survives is a raised circular platform defined by a scarp, a step-like earthen edge, that drops about sixty centimetres on the northern side and rises to around one point two metres at the south. At the south-east, a fragmentary bank still stands, about one and a half metres wide, though it rises only twenty centimetres internally, suggesting significant levelling over time. More telling are the stones visible at the north-east: a loosely spaced arc that appears to be the remnant of a kerb, the kind of stone edging that would once have marked the inner face of a bank now largely gone. Together these traces allow a rough outline of the original structure to be read, even if much of it has been reduced to near invisibility.