But the low earthwork at Knocknalyre, sitting on a level patch above an east-facing slope, is the remains of a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, the kind of enclosed farmstead that thousands of early medieval families across Ireland built and lived within roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Most people drive past such features without knowing what they are looking at, and this one asks for a certain patience from the eye.

The enclosure is roughly circular, measuring approximately 41.5 metres north to south and 35.3 metres east to west. What survives of the surrounding bank is modest, rising only about 0.3 metres along the south-south-west to north-east arc, and reaching a maximum height of one metre as a scarp around the rest of the circuit. The interior is level. Ordnance Survey maps from 1842, 1904, and 1937 all record it as a hachured circular enclosure with a diameter of around 40 metres, meaning the feature has held its shape across nearly two centuries of documented mapping, even as the land around it continued as working pasture. Garrycloyne church lies to the north-east, a reminder that early ecclesiastical and secular sites in this part of Mid Cork were frequently established in close proximity to one another.