A rath, the Irish term for a roughly circular earthen enclosure used as a farmstead in the early medieval period, once occupied a gentle rise in this part of County Mayo. It has since been levelled, yet the ground still holds its memory. A slightly raised subcircular area, roughly 34 metres north to south and 31.5 metres east to west, is all that remains, its perimeter traced by a broad, low scarp where the bank once stood. On the southern half, where the natural fall of the ground lends the earthwork a little extra height, the external face of that remnant bank still reaches about 1.4 metres. Elsewhere, you would need to know what you were looking for.

The enclosure appears on Ordnance Survey six-inch maps from both 1838 and 1930, drawn in each case as a circular ringfort-like feature, which suggests it was still legible as a distinct form well into the twentieth century before being reduced to its present state. What is particularly striking about the Garrycloonagh example is not its own condition but its context. Another rath sits just 125 metres to the south, and a megalithic structure lies roughly 100 metres to the southeast. Megalithic structures in this part of Ireland often predate the early medieval raths by several thousand years, which means this small patch of pasture in Mayo contains traces of settlement or activity from more than one period of prehistory, arranged in close proximity on the same undulating ground.