The rath at Taghmon in County Westmeath breaks that pattern entirely. It sits on low, marshy ground, which is unusual enough in itself, and it does so in a state of considerable damage, having been largely destroyed by quarrying. What remains is fragmentary but still legible, a quietly melancholy outline of something that was once a functioning enclosed settlement.

A ringfort, or rath, is an enclosed circular or oval farmstead dating broadly from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries. They were built in their thousands across Ireland, most consisting of an earthen bank with an external ditch, called a fosse, enclosing a domestic interior where a family would have lived and kept livestock. The Taghmon example follows that basic form: a sub-circular area roughly 23.4 metres in diameter, enclosed by an earthen bank and a wide fosse. The bank now stands only about 25 centimetres high and survives in fragments, while the fosse, which is around 3.4 metres wide and half a metre deep, is visible only along the southern and north-north-western arc. Inside, the ground rises slightly towards the centre, and traces of cultivation ridges are still detectable, suggesting that at some point the interior was turned over to agriculture rather than habitation. Quarry holes cut directly into that interior, and drainage channels run outside the monument to the north and east, all of which speaks to the practical pressures that have worn the site down over centuries. A second ringfort lies roughly 80 metres to the west, which hints that this corner of Westmeath was once more densely settled than its present appearance might suggest.