Not buried, not ruined in any dramatic sense, simply swallowed by tall grass on flat ground, its circular outline pressing gently against the landscape rather than announcing itself. This is the quieter end of Irish early medieval archaeology, and it rewards patience more than spectacle.

A rath, to use the Irish term, is a ringfort defined by earthen rather than stone enclosure, typically dating from the early medieval period between roughly 500 and 1000 AD, and used as a farmstead or small defended enclosure. The Gortmore example is modest even by those standards. The circular area measures approximately 24 metres north to south and 23 metres east to west, enclosed by an earthen bank that stands just 0.3 metres above the interior ground level and 0.5 metres above the exterior. Outside the bank runs a fosse, that is, a shallow ditch, around 3.2 metres wide and 0.3 metres deep. These are not imposing dimensions, but they represent the standard vocabulary of rural enclosure from a period when thousands of such sites were constructed across Ireland. What complicates this particular example is a north to south field boundary, probably of later agricultural origin, that cuts across the enclosing element from the north-east through to the south-east, partially truncating the bank. A deep drain on the western side of that boundary has further disturbed the site, making it harder to read the original form with any confidence. The record was compiled by Denis Power and uploaded in August 2011.

Access is across working farmland, so the usual courtesies apply: seek permission before entering, and expect the site to be in agricultural use. The meadow setting means the rath is most visible in late summer or early autumn, when the grass has been cut and the low bank and fosse have a chance to register in the raking light of a lower sun. Once there, look for the subtle change in ground level rather than any upstanding feature; the enclosure is legible mainly as a gentle rise and fall in the earth. The truncating field boundary is the most structurally obvious element on site, which is something of an irony given that it is the feature doing the damage.