The rath at Kilbeg in County Galway sits on a low ridge rising from otherwise level grassland, and at some point a roughly east-west roadway was cut straight across it, slicing the site from roughly its north-west to north-east. The result is a ringfort that now exists more as a record of what was once there than as something you could easily read in the landscape.

A rath is a type of early medieval enclosure, typically circular or roughly circular, defined by an earthen bank and internal ditch, and used as a farmstead or settlement. Thousands survive across Ireland in varying states of preservation. The Kilbeg example measures around 25 metres east to west, and what remains is confined to the southern portion of the original circuit. A low scarp is visible from the east around to the south-east, and an earthen bank continues from there through the south and around to the west. To the north of the road, no surface trace of the enclosing element survives at all. The site was recorded on the 1945 revision of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map as a roughly circular enclosure, meaning the road had already done its work well before that mapping was carried out.