On a south-west-facing slope in Toorala, County Waterford, a roughly circular earthwork sits quietly beneath a cover of trees, its original purpose as a defended farmstead now readable only in the shape of the ground itself. This is a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common monument type in the Irish landscape. Ringforts were typically enclosed homesteads of the early medieval period, their earthen banks serving as much to define status and territory as to keep out wolves or rivals. What makes this one worth a second look is what it has and what it lacks: a stone-faced entrance survives on the northern side, but there is no fosse, the encircling ditch that usually accompanies such banks, which either weathered away or was never dug.

The enclosure is subcircular in plan, measuring roughly 31 metres on its north-east to south-west axis and 28 metres across from north-west to south-east. The earthen bank is at its most intact along the northern arc, where it reaches a width of 4.7 metres and stands 1.6 metres high on both its inner and outer faces. Elsewhere it has been reduced almost to a scarp, dropping to as little as 0.8 metres on the south-eastern side. The entrance gap, just 1.8 metres wide, faces north-north-east, and the stone lining on its northern side is a rare surviving detail, a small trace of the craft that went into what would once have been a working, inhabited place.