A circular fort and a series of rectangular enclosures sit quietly at a place called Balkill, the kind of features that blend into the hillside unless you already know to look for them. Enclosures of this sort, whether used for settlement, agriculture, or stock management in early medieval Ireland, were once a common feature of the Irish landscape, but the majority have long since been ploughed out or built over. That any survive here, within reach of one of Dublin's busiest coastal suburbs, is quietly remarkable.

The enclosures were first formally identified by Father John Shearman in the mid-nineteenth century. Shearman, a Catholic priest and antiquarian who contributed substantially to the recording of early Irish sites, noted the circular fort and the rectangular enclosures in his published work of 1866 to 1869, locating them high on the northern slope at Balkill within the demesne. His findings were later referenced by the archaeologist Thomas Johnson Westropp in 1922, lending the identification additional scholarly weight. Beyond those two citations, the documentary record for this particular site is thin, which is itself telling: many earthwork sites in Ireland exist at the margins of the written record, known mainly because a sharp-eyed observer happened to pass through at the right moment.

Access to the Howth Demesne is possible via the network of paths around Howth Head, though the northern slopes tend to attract fewer walkers than the more dramatic cliff paths to the south and east. Balkill is not a signposted destination, and the earthworks themselves are unlikely to be marked on general visitor maps. Anyone hoping to locate them should come with an Ordnance Survey map and some patience. The features are most readable in low winter light or in early spring before ground vegetation thickens, when slight changes in topography become easier to trace across a hillside. What you are looking for is subtle: a curving rise in the ground where a bank once stood, a hint of angular geometry where the rectangular enclosures meet the slope.