At Perssepark in County Galway, however, that gap may well be original, a deliberate entrance through which people passed more than a thousand years ago. The earthwork is a rath, the most common type of ringfort found across Ireland, essentially a circular or subcircular area enclosed by one or more raised banks, sometimes accompanied by a ditch, and used in early medieval times as a farmstead or defended residence.

This particular example measures roughly 35 metres east to west and 31 metres north to south, making it a modest but reasonably proportioned example of the type. The enclosing bank survives in fair condition, though quarrying has eaten into it at the south-east, leaving that section compromised. On the eastern side, a shallow depression in the ground may point to the former presence of a fosse, the external ditch that would originally have been dug alongside the bank to reinforce the enclosure. The site does not stand alone in the landscape either; another enclosure lies approximately 100 metres to the north-north-west, a proximity that raises quiet questions about the relationship between the two features and the community that once inhabited this corner of north Galway.