The rath at Coolquane is a little less forthcoming. Part of its earthen bank has been absorbed into a modern field boundary, the southern section now serving as a farm fence standing 1.6 metres high, while the remaining arc to the south-west and east has been partially levelled, dropping to just over half a metre in places. The site has, in other words, been quietly dismantled by the ordinary business of agriculture.

A rath is the Irish term for a ringfort, the most common field monument in the Irish landscape, typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, and understood to have served as an enclosed farmstead for a single family or small kin group. The earthen bank defined the boundary of that domestic world. At Coolquane the enclosed area measures approximately 25.6 metres north to south and 27 metres east to west, dimensions well within the typical range for such sites. What sets its situation apart is the topography. It sits on a steep north-facing slope, and the positioning, unusual given that most ringforts favour more sheltered or south-facing ground, gives it an extensive outlook to the north-west and north-east. Whether that view served a practical function, keeping watch over routes or grazing land below, or was simply a consequence of where land was available, cannot now be said with certainty.