A rath, as these earthwork enclosures are commonly known, typically consists of a roughly circular bank and ditch constructed during the Early Medieval period, somewhere between the fifth and twelfth centuries. They served as farmstead enclosures, protecting a family's dwelling, livestock, and stores, and for centuries they were woven so thoroughly into the Irish countryside that many people passed them daily without a second thought. Quilty's example belongs to this vast, under-examined category of monument, ordinary in type but singular simply by virtue of surviving at all in a coastal area where land use and Atlantic weather have not always been kind to earthworks.