On a broad spur of land running north-west to south-east in Shanakill, Co. Waterford, there is an earthwork that most passing walkers would mistake for an unruly field boundary or a natural rise in the ground. Look more carefully and the geometry gives it away: a subcircular enclosure roughly 57 metres east to west and around 50 metres north to south, its perimeter defined by an overgrown bank of earth and stone and, beyond that, a fosse, the whole thing quietly asserting a human intention that is well over a thousand years old.

A rath, as ringforts of this earthen type are commonly known in Ireland, was typically the enclosed farmstead of an early medieval family of some local standing, the bank and fosse serving as much as a statement of status as a practical barrier against livestock or opportunistic raiding. The Shanakill example preserves its outer fosse almost completely, a slightly flat-bottomed ditch varying in width from around 6.5 to 7.5 metres at the top and reaching a depth of up to 1.3 metres on its eastern side. An external stone-faced bank, modest in height at around half a metre, has been absorbed into a later field boundary running from the north-east to the south, which is a common fate for ancient stonework in a landscape that farmers have been quietly reorganising for centuries. The enclosing bank itself, up to five metres wide, survives well on most of its circuit, though it has been removed on the south-western side. The south-eastern entrance, originally around three metres wide, has been widened at some point, almost certainly to accommodate modern agricultural use rather than early medieval visitors.