Yet in 1975, there was still enough to measure and describe: a large sub-circular enclosure roughly 36 metres north to south and 39 metres east to west, ringed by two earthen banks with a fosse, or ditch, running between them. That rapid disappearance is what makes this site in Martinstown, Co. Westmeath quietly unsettling. What had survived for well over a thousand years was effectively erased within living memory.

A ringfort, sometimes called a rath, is one of the most common monument types in Ireland, typically a circular enclosure defined by earthen banks and ditches, used as a farmstead during the early medieval period. This example sat on a south-facing slope near a steep summit, with good views across the gently undulating Westmeath countryside. When surveyors examined it in 1975, the inner bank was already fragmentary, best preserved along the north-northwest arc to a height of about one metre. The fosse had been infilled in several places, the outer bank was low and barely visible, quarrying had eaten into the southeastern perimeter, and a modern field fence cut straight through the eastern side. Two other ringforts lie within 135 metres, one to the northwest and one to the east-southeast, suggesting this was once a landscape with a notable concentration of early medieval settlement. By the time a satellite photograph was taken in November 2011, even the degraded remains described thirty-six years earlier had gone.