On a gently east-facing slope in Ballyegny, County Limerick, a ringfort once stood complete enough to be recorded on the Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1923. By the time field archaeologists came to assess it, the enclosure had been levelled, its surrounding field boundaries cleared away, and the land returned to ordinary pasture. What survives is a single short arc of scarped edge at the north-east, a low shelf in the ground roughly thirty centimetres high and just under a metre and a half wide. That is all.

A rath, to give it its Irish name, is a type of ringfort built from an earthen bank and internal ditch, typically enclosing a farmstead during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Thousands once dotted the Irish countryside, and Limerick has its share of survivors and losses alike. This one was recorded as a roughly circular enclosure with a diameter of around twenty-five metres, modest even by the standards of the form. The 1923 map reference gives a useful terminus for its recorded existence as a legible monument, though the levelling itself is undated. The site was compiled and assessed by Denis Power, with the record uploaded in August 2011.

Visitors should temper expectations before making a special journey. The site sits in working pasture, and there is no public facility or marked trail. The surviving feature, that short arc of scarped ground at the north-east of the former enclosure, requires some patience and a reasonable eye for subtle earthworks. Low winter light, which throws even gentle ground undulations into relief, is the best time to make out what little endures. The value here is less visual than conceptual: standing on this slope, it is possible to look at a field that has been farmed continuously for perhaps fifteen centuries, and register how thoroughly evidence of early settlement can be absorbed back into the land without ever quite disappearing.