The walls are modest in scale, roughly half a metre thick and about forty centimetres high where they emerge, but they extend across an area of approximately 250 metres in one direction and 200 in another. In the deeper parts of the bog, they vanish entirely beneath the surface, swallowed by peat that has accumulated over centuries. What remains visible is enough to suggest a working agricultural landscape, a place that was once divided, managed, and lived in.

This kind of relict field system, preserved beneath bogland, is a reminder of how dramatically the Irish landscape has changed since prehistory. Peat bogs grow slowly over millennia, and as they expand they can seal older surfaces beneath them, protecting stone walls, floors, and even soils from the disturbance that has erased similar features elsewhere. At Coonane, the field boundaries are not alone. Within the same network sit a wedge tomb, a type of megalithic burial monument typically dating to the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age, characterised by a tapering stone-built chamber; a hut site, the remains of a former dwelling; and an enclosure, a defined area bounded by some form of constructed barrier. Together, these features point to a settlement and funerary landscape of considerable age, where people farmed, lived, and buried their dead before the bog crept in.