By the time anyone thought to look more closely, most of it had quietly disappeared.

The enclosure at Corryhagan was an embanked fort, a type of enclosed settlement defined by an earthen bank thrown up around a roughly circular area, common across Ireland from prehistoric through to early medieval times. This particular example was substantial, with an external diameter of around 80 to 85 metres, placing it among the larger examples of its kind. It sat on the northern shore of a bay that opens onto White Lough, with the lough shore itself forming part of its southern boundary. What makes it historically awkward is that the 1834 Ordnance Survey six-inch map is the only cartographic record to show it clearly and completely. Later surveys tell a different story: only faint traces of a bank survive along the northern arc, running from the north-west around to the north-east, where the earthwork gradually merges into an ordinary field boundary before giving way to the shoreline. A house was constructed within the south-western quadrant of the enclosure sometime before 1995, accounting for some of what was lost.

For anyone visiting the White Lough area, the site offers little in the way of visible archaeology. The shoreline orientation is the clearest remaining indicator of where the fort once sat, and the faint bank fragments to the north are discernible if you know what you are looking for, though they blend easily into the surrounding fieldscape.