Raths, or ringforts, are among the most common archaeological monuments in Ireland, with estimates suggesting around 45,000 once existed across the island. They were the farmsteads of early medieval Ireland, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries, enclosed by one or more circular earthen banks and ditches, and home to a single family and their livestock. The fact that so many survive at all is partly because of a long-held folk belief that disturbing a fairy fort, as they came to be called, would bring misfortune. That superstition, however unscientific, has preserved more archaeology than any planning regulation.

Kilmoraun is a small townland in Clare, a county that contains a remarkable density of such monuments given the varied terrain running from the Burren's limestone pavements down to the Shannon estuary. The rath here is one of countless such enclosures that once organised the rural landscape into discrete family territories, each fort representing not just a dwelling but a unit of social and economic life under the Brehon law system that governed early Irish society. The precise details of this particular example, its dimensions, the number of its enclosing banks, any finds associated with it, remain to be fully documented in the public record.