In a field of level pastureland at Lisnagranshy in County Galway, there is almost nothing to find: a slight hollow in the ground, a subtle dip in the grass, and beneath it the ghost of an earthwork that once had clear enough edges to be measured and mapped.

The site was recorded by McCaffrey in 1952 as an oval earthen fort, the term used for a rath, which is a type of ringfort constructed from raised banks of earth and an encircling external ditch called a fosse. Ringforts are among the most common early medieval monuments in Ireland, typically associated with farming settlements from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, and this example measured approximately 30.5 metres east to west and 23.8 metres north to south at the time of survey. What finished it was sand digging. The interior was excavated for material, and the eastern section of the bank went with it. The site was subsequently cleared, and whatever profile it once held was levelled away entirely. The hollow that remains is less a feature than an absence, a place where the ground remembers something used to sit there.