The rath at Gowerhass in County Clare is one such site, a circular earthwork enclosure of the kind that served as a farmstead or defended homestead during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. These structures, known interchangeably as raths or ringforts depending on whether their enclosing banks were of earth or stone, were the basic unit of rural settlement for centuries, and Clare is particularly well supplied with them.

Beyond its classification and its location in Gowerhass, the documented detail for this particular site is presently thin. What can be said is that the townsland of Gowerhass sits within a county whose limestone geology and ancient land divisions have preserved an unusual concentration of early medieval remains. A rath typically consists of one or more circular earthen banks and ditches enclosing a central area where a family and their animals would have lived, and the surrounding earthworks were as much a statement of status as a practical defence. In Clare, as elsewhere in Ireland, these sites were later woven into folklore, often regarded as fairy forts, a reputation that paradoxically helped preserve many of them from deliberate destruction across the centuries.