That is, in a sense, the whole point. For decades, a site on Knockanure was recorded in local accounts as an extensive triple stone circle, one unusual enough that it was said to differ from all the well-known examples around Lough Gur, just a few miles to the north. The reality, when examined carefully, turns out to be something rather more prosaic but no less interesting: an ancient field system, its boundaries marked by low boulders set at intervals, with the remains of what appears to be a small rectangular enclosure at one point along it.

The correction comes from O'Kelly, writing in 1942 to 1943, who cited an earlier account by a man named Lynch. Lynch had described the triple circle with apparent confidence, but O'Kelly's assessment was blunt: there is no circle on this hill. What Lynch most likely saw were the intermittent boulders that mark the old fence lines, their irregular spacing and occasional clustering giving the impression, at a glance or from memory, of concentric rings. The rectangular enclosure, of which two adjacent sides have been lost, was probably the nucleus of the confusion, its standing stones and boulders easily misread as part of a ceremonial arrangement. Knockanure itself is described as a fertile, limestone hillock, meaning it sits on the carboniferous limestone geology common to this part of Limerick, the kind of ground that would have made it genuinely attractive for early agricultural use and worth the effort of dividing and enclosing.

The site sits at the edge of Ballycullane bog, which means the approach on foot involves navigating the kind of soft, uneven terrain typical of Irish raised bog margins. The field system is subtle rather than dramatic; visitors should look for low, irregular lines of stone rather than anything upstanding or monumental. What survives is fragmentary, and two sides of the enclosure are gone entirely, so some patience and a willingness to read the landscape slowly will help. The interest here is less in any single feature than in the accumulated strangeness of a misidentified site, and what that misidentification quietly reveals about how ancient field boundaries can fool even attentive observers.