In a field at Shanakill in County Waterford, there is an enclosure that has lost its entrance. Whatever gap or gateway once allowed people or animals in and out has long since disappeared, leaving a slightly dished, D-shaped area with no obvious way in or out, its western side running straight while the rest curves. An enclosure of this kind, a roughly circular or oval area defined by a low earthen bank or scarp, is one of the most common monument types in the Irish landscape, most often associated with early medieval settlement or landholding. What makes this one quietly puzzling is the straightness of that western edge, which gives it a geometry that sits a little uneasily with the usual ring.

The 1840 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map recorded it, though only faintly, as a circular enclosure roughly 55 metres east to west and 50 metres north to south. On the ground today the visible remains are somewhat smaller, a scarp between four and five metres wide and only about 0.3 metres high, enclosing an area of roughly 45 metres by 35 metres. It sits in pasture on the edge of a plateau, with the Clodiagh River running to the north-east about 200 metres away in a north-west to south-east direction. That position on a plateau edge overlooking a river valley is typical of early enclosures in Ireland, where elevated ground with access to water was practical for farming and defensible by geography rather than by walls.

The slight dishing of the interior, where the ground within sits a little lower than the surrounding pasture, is worth noticing if you visit. It can suggest long-term occupation and the accumulation of domestic debris over time, though without excavation it is impossible to say more. The enclosure is low and unspectacular in the way that most surviving earthworks are, the kind of feature that registers only once you know what you are looking for.