The one at Gooldshill in north Cork exists in a more ghostly form: it has never been excavated, and its outline is known almost entirely from a single aerial photograph taken in July 1975. What the photograph captured were cropmarks, the faint but legible traces that buried features leave on growing vegetation when dry conditions cause soil above a ditch or bank to behave differently from the surrounding ground. In this case, the marks revealed three sides of a rectangular enclosure, the eastern, southern, and western, along with what appears to be an external fosse, a defensive or boundary ditch running outside the bank. The northern side was not picked out by cropmarks at all; instead, it coincides with an existing field boundary, suggesting that a modern land division has, perhaps accidentally, preserved or followed the line of something considerably older.

The photograph in question was taken as part of the Geological Survey of Ireland's aerial programme, and the image reference GSIAP W 412 is the primary record. The enclosure's shape, rectangular rather than the more common circular or oval ringfort form, raises questions about its age and function. Rectangular enclosures in Ireland are associated with a range of periods and uses, from early medieval ecclesiastical sites to later secular settlements, though without excavation or further survey it is impossible to say which category, if any, applies here. What can be said is that the external fosse, a feature where a ditch is placed on the outside of a bank rather than the inside, is a recognisable element of defended or formally bounded enclosures, lending a certain deliberate character to whatever was once contained within.