On an east-facing slope at Kippagh in north County Cork, a ringfort, the type of circular enclosed farmstead that was the basic unit of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, has been so thoroughly levelled that it leaves no visible trace on the ground. A visitor standing in the pasture today would have no reason to suspect that anything had ever stood there at all.

Ordnance Survey maps from 1842, 1904, and 1938 all show the same slightly oval enclosure, roughly 40 metres east to west, marked with the hachured lines that cartographers used to indicate an earthwork or bank. By 1904 and 1938, the southern side was already recorded as disturbed, and the 1842 map shows a lime kiln at that spot, a simple structure used for burning limestone to produce agricultural lime, which likely accounts for some of the damage. A survey by Bowman in 1934 described it as a single-ramparted fort with a bank about four feet high and a diameter of around 29 yards, and noted that one-third of the circuit had already been levelled by then. It was on land belonging to a Mrs. Fitzgerald at that time. The site also has a possible souterrain associated with it in the south-western quadrant; a souterrain being an underground stone-lined passage, typically used for storage or refuge, and a feature not uncommon within Irish ringforts. Whatever remained of the earthwork after Bowman's visit did not survive much longer.