But the geometry here is precise enough to stop you: roughly 42 metres east to west, 41.4 metres north to south, a near-perfect circle defined by an earthen bank that still stands 1.7 metres high in places. Where the bank survives best, you can make out stone-facing beneath the soil, suggesting that whoever built this put considerable effort into its construction. To the south and west, a faint external fosse, a defensive ditch dug around the outside of the enclosure, remains just visible as a shallow depression in the ground.

This is a rath, the most common monument type in the Irish landscape. Raths are earthen ringforts, and there are tens of thousands of them across the country, most dating from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. They served primarily as farmsteads, the enclosed interiors providing a defended space for a household and its livestock rather than a military fortification in any grand sense. The interior of this particular example slopes downward to the south, following the natural fall of the hillside, which faces south toward the Leapford stream below. The combination of a south-facing aspect, a sheltered slope, and proximity to fresh water is exactly the kind of location an early medieval farming family would have chosen with care.