The one at Glencollins, in County Cork, belongs to a tradition of managed water features that were once practical necessities rather than ornamental additions, used to keep fresh fish available through winter months or during the fasting periods that punctuated the medieval and early modern calendar. Their survival in the landscape, often as little more than a silted depression or an irregularly shaped pool, is a quiet reminder of how carefully earlier inhabitants organised their food supply around the rhythms of the year.