Look more carefully, though, and the arc of an ancient enclosing bank begins to resolve itself from the landscape, curving through the grass and hinting at the circular form it once completed.

This is a rath, one of the thousands of ringforts scattered across Ireland, typically dating from the early medieval period roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. A rath is a type of ringfort defined by earthen rather than stone enclosure, used as a defended farmstead or the residence of a family of some local standing. The example at Courtbrown sits on that gentle low rise in undulating pasture, and its enclosing bank, constructed from both earth and stone, survives in an arc running from the south-east around to the north-east. It measures approximately thirty metres across on a north-south axis, with the bank standing around 0.7 metres high on the interior and one metre on the exterior, a modest but still legible profile. The northeastern to southeastern section has not survived, leaving the circuit incomplete. The interior, which is level, has since become colonised by trees, so that the space once cleared for habitation is now a small wooded enclosure. The site was documented by Denis Power and uploaded to the record in August 2011.

The rath sits in working farmland, and visitors should expect to navigate gently rolling pasture rather than a maintained path. The surviving bank is most readable from the south-east, where the arc is clearest, though the tree cover within the interior makes it easier to identify the structure from a slight distance than from directly alongside it. Because the northeastern section of the bank has been lost, approaching from that side risks missing the feature altogether. Winter or early spring, when ground vegetation is lower, will make the remaining earthworks easier to trace.