At Coolcran in County Mayo, a ringfort once occupied the narrow crest of a steep-sided ridge running north to south, commanding wide views in every direction. Nothing of it remains visible today, yet the site still appears in the record, a ghost of an enclosure that can only be traced through old maps and the contours of the land itself.

A rath is an early medieval earthwork enclosure, typically circular or subcircular, formed by a bank and ditch and used as a farmstead or defended dwelling. The Coolcran example was documented on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1837, recorded there as a ringfort-like enclosure. By the 1930 revision, it appeared as a subcircular hachured enclosure of around twenty metres in diameter, its southern edge already absorbed into a later field boundary. At some point after that, it was levelled entirely. The ridge top where it stood is now open pasture, and there is no visible trace remaining at ground level. The choice of location, towards the northern end of the ridge where the slope eases slightly, suggests deliberate siting; whoever built here had the high ground, and presumably the outlook that came with it, firmly in mind.