On a north-facing slope at Lackan in County Galway, a ringfort that was still clearly visible in the nineteenth century has been worn away to almost nothing, leaving only a curving, tree-lined scarp as evidence that it was ever there at all.

A rath is a type of circular earthwork enclosure, typically of early medieval date, built from an earthen bank and ditch and used as a farmstead or place of refuge. The Lackan example was recorded on the 1838 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map as a circular enclosure roughly 35 metres in diameter, a modest but legible feature in the landscape. By the time the 1920 edition was produced, it had already been partially levelled, most likely through gradual agricultural clearance. What remains today is a single curving scarp, running from west to north and edged with trees, which is all that marks the original circuit of the bank.