Most of these early medieval enclosures, known in Irish as raths, survive because farmers learned to work around them, wary of disturbing what tradition held to be fairy ground. At Glennameade in County Limerick, someone was less cautious. A section of the earthen bank running from the north-northwest to the north-northeast has been dug away, and the interior behind it carries the evidence: loose stone scattered across the ground, dense overgrowth concealing whatever remains, and a dry-stone field wall butted up against both ends of the breach as if to paper over the gap.

A rath is essentially a circular domestic enclosure, typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly the sixth to the twelfth centuries. It would originally have defined the farmstead of a family of some local standing, the earthen bank serving as both boundary and a degree of protection for livestock. This example at Glennameade sits in pasture on gently undulating ground, with the terrain falling away immediately to the west into a wooded valley. The enclosure measures 27.5 metres in diameter, with the surviving bank rising to 1.1 metres on the interior face and 1.85 metres on the exterior. The record was compiled by Denis Power and uploaded in August 2011, forming part of the wider survey of such monuments across the county.

The site is on agricultural land, so access depends on the goodwill of the landowner and a reasonable pair of boots. The wooded valley to the west gives the spot a degree of shelter and shade, and in summer the interior becomes particularly difficult to read through the vegetation. The most legible part of the monument is the surviving bank itself, where the height differential between interior and exterior faces is still clear. The quarried section to the north is worth examining closely: the abrupt ends of the earthwork and the way the field wall closes the gap tell a small story about how the landscape was reorganised at some point, probably when the stone beneath the bank became more useful to someone than any respect for the old enclosure.