Somewhere in the townland of Martinstown in County Kildare, a ringfort has ceased to exist, at least in any form the eye can follow. What was recorded in 2000 as a poorly preserved circular earthwork, roughly 46 metres across, defined by a low bank and faint traces of an outer fosse, has since been levelled entirely. Aerial photography taken after that date shows no surface remains whatsoever. The site is, in practical terms, gone.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were enclosed farmsteads typically built during the early medieval period, from roughly the fifth to the twelfth century. They usually consist of a circular bank of earth and an external ditch, called a fosse, enclosing a domestic area where a family and their animals would have lived. The Martinstown example was never a dramatic specimen. When it was visited in 2000, the bank stood only between 0.2 and 0.4 metres high, and the outer fosse had already been partially recut as a field drain along the western side, suggesting the land had been in productive agricultural use for some time and that the monument had been accommodated into, and gradually overtaken by, the working landscape around it. Between that last recorded visit and the date aerial imagery confirmed its disappearance, whatever remained was removed completely. What the precise cause was, whether deepened drainage works, ploughing, or deliberate clearance, is not recorded.