Thousands were built across Ireland, mostly between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries, and this one follows the familiar form with quiet precision. A raised interior platform, roughly 28.3 metres across, is enclosed by a low earthen bank, and beyond that the ghost of a fosse, a defensive ditch, whose infilled outline can still be read in the ground.

Ringforts of this kind, also called raths, were typically the homes of farming families of some local status, the bank and ditch serving as a boundary and a modest deterrent to cattle raiders rather than a serious military fortification. What makes the Gortmore example worth pausing over is the legibility of one particular detail: a break in the western side of the bank that represents the original entrance. After more than a thousand years, the threshold is still there, oriented as it was when someone last walked through it and closed the gap behind them.