On a gentle east-facing slope just below the crest of a low hill at Knockanally in County Kildare, there is a ringfort that is easier to read on an aerial photograph than to make out underfoot. Ringforts, also called raths, are circular enclosed settlements dating mainly from the early medieval period, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches surrounding a domestic or agricultural space. This one has survived, but only just.

What remains is an approximately circular enclosure, measuring roughly 42 metres north to south and 39 metres east to west, consisting of a low inner earthen bank, a fosse (the ditch between the banks), and a second, fainter outer bank beyond it. The dimensions are still traceable, but the banks rise only 30 to 40 centimetres above the interior and the fosse has silted to a depth of around 20 centimetres, meaning the whole thing sits almost flush with the surrounding pasture. A shallow field drain cuts across the interior from north to south, east of centre, testament to centuries of agricultural use that have steadily reduced the site. Crucially, the enclosure was recorded on George Taylor's 1783 map of County Kildare, marked as a circular feature at a time when the earthworks would presumably have been more legible on the ground. That cartographic record gives the site a fixed historical anchor even as the physical remains have continued to fade. By 2005, an aerial photograph could still pick it out, though faintly, the slight shadows and tonal variations in the grass doing the work that the earthworks themselves can barely manage.