Look more closely and the illusion starts to unravel. The stonework is a little too deliberate, the ruin a little too composed. This is a sham ruin, a deliberately constructed fake, built to appear ancient and atmospheric as a piece of designed landscape, rather than to serve any defensive or domestic purpose. It is an odd thing to encounter in a field, and odder still once you understand just how many layers of history are stacked beneath it.

The earthwork itself predates the theatrical addition by centuries, possibly millennia. It takes the form of a stepped barrow, a type of funerary or ceremonial mound, with two distinct stages rising one above the other. The lower platform measures roughly 42 metres in diameter and stands about 2.5 metres high, with a wide flat berm running around its upper edge. Above that sits a smaller mound, around 20 metres across and again about 2.5 metres tall. The whole structure sits within a ceremonial enclosure, suggesting it was once part of a significant ritual landscape. At some point in the 17th century, whoever occupied the nearby manor house decided to incorporate the mound into their garden design, inserting a stone staircase on the south-west side and erecting a square turret within a circular limestone wall at the summit. The turret had a plain doorway and a window with chamfered brick corners, and Gabriel Beranger, the artist and antiquary, recorded it in a drawing made in 1767 as a two-storied structure. The sham ruin as a garden feature was fashionable among the landed gentry of the period, lending an air of gothic melancholy to an otherwise domestic landscape.

The mound sits to the north-west of the 17th-century manor house and is located on private agricultural land, so access is not straightforward. The site is recorded in the Archaeological Survey of Ireland and has been researched in detail by archaeologist Geraldine Stout. Anyone with a serious interest in visiting should make appropriate enquiries regarding access beforehand. The circular limestone wall and the ruined turret at the summit are what most reward close inspection, particularly for the contrast between the rough-hewn quality of the masonry and the more refined brickwork around the window. The external stone stairs on the south-west face, now weathered and partially overgrown, are easy to miss from a distance but give a clear sense of just how deliberately this ancient mound was reshaped to suit a later century's taste for romantic decay.