On the southern slope of a ridge at Teeskagh in County Clare sits a subcircular enclosure roughly eleven metres in diameter, built from a drystone wall, and apparently of modern construction. The kind of enclosure that appears in official heritage registers tends to conjure images of early medieval ringforts or prehistoric settlement remains, so there is something quietly deflating, and perhaps also instructive, about this one.

The site was recorded as an enclosure in the Sites and Monuments Record in 1992 and again in the Record of Monuments and Places in 1996, its outline marked on the 1916 Ordnance Survey six-inch map by a solid line. That cartographic trace was enough to keep it listed for years. When a physical inspection was finally carried out in 1999, the enclosure turned out to be a modest drystone structure with no clear ancient origins. Drystone construction, which uses no mortar and relies entirely on the careful stacking and interlocking of stone, is a technique with a very long history in Ireland, which is part of what makes dating such features difficult from a distance. The 1916 map reference and the official listings had given the site an air of antiquity it may not deserve.