But the natural elevation at Tevrin was chosen deliberately, and the earthworks that survive on its crown suggest that someone, many centuries ago, understood exactly what this spot offered. The site commands good views in all directions, a quality that was rarely incidental when early medieval communities were deciding where to build and where to defend.

What remains is a rath, the Irish term for an earthen ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead built predominantly between the sixth and tenth centuries and once so common across Ireland that tens of thousands of examples survive in varying states of repair. Here the enclosure is sub-circular, roughly twenty metres across on the north-west to south-east axis and twenty-two metres on the north-east to south-west, and it is surrounded by an earthen bank with a shallow external fosse, the ditch that would originally have reinforced the sense of boundary and defence. The bank has been worn down to little more than a scarp along its north-eastern to southern arc, though the fosse remains legible in places, particularly from the north-west and from the south-west. A gap roughly 1.8 metres wide on the eastern side may be the original entrance. Most quietly telling of all is what sits at the centre of the interior: the grass-covered footings of a hut, the faint outline of where someone actually lived. A second ringfort lies just thirty-five metres to the south-east, which raises its own questions about how these two enclosures related to one another and whether they were in use at the same time.