In the spring of 1989, a spell of high tides and stormy weather stripped back the beach at An Timleach Mór Thiar to reveal twenty-seven cultivation ridges, the kind of raised planting beds that once supported crops across boggy or waterlogged ground. They sat in the intertidal zone, the strip of shore that the sea covers and uncovers with each tide, occupying an area roughly 300 metres north to south and 100 metres east to west. The ridges were made of a dark, peaty material packed with small stones, each one averaging about 1.7 metres wide and 0.2 metres high, with lengths running up to 22 metres where erosion had not shortened them further.

What makes the find particularly striking is its context. Cultivation ridges do not belong in the sea. The fact that these ones appear in the intertidal zone means the landscape here has changed dramatically since they were in use, the land now lying below the level it once occupied when people were working it. Alongside the ridges, a number of pine stumps were found still rooted in place to the west, and a section of what is described as a pre-bog wall surfaces occasionally on the beach to the east. Together these features suggest a former land surface of some age, one that supported woodland, enclosed fields, and cultivated ground before peat growth and rising sea levels gradually swallowed it. The site was partially damaged by storms not long after its discovery, and the ridges are now covered by sand once more, returned to the obscurity they had kept for centuries.

There is no reliable way to visit the ridges in any meaningful sense; they are buried again and may surface only under the right, or rather the wrong, combination of weather and tide. The pre-bog wall to the east of the site does appear occasionally, however, and the broader beach at Inny Strand remains publicly accessible. Those with an interest in the deeper past of the Iveragh Peninsula might find the shoreline worth watching, particularly after rough weather, with the knowledge that what lies underneath is rather older than it looks.