That is roughly the footprint of a large garden shed, yet what remains here are the base courses of a drystone wall, its upper stones long since tumbled inward and grassed over, the whole thing settling quietly back into the hillside on an east-facing undulating slope in County Cork.

The structure is a hut site, a term used in Irish archaeology to describe the remains of a small, usually circular building of uncertain date and function, often found in upland or marginal ground. This one was built with some care for the terrain: on its western, uphill side, the builders cut about twenty centimetres into the slope to create a more level base, and it is here that the wall survives best, sheltered by the cut. The drystone wall, constructed without mortar by fitting stones together by hand, was originally about sixty centimetres thick. Today it stands only twenty centimetres high, with the fallen stones visible not just inside the interior but also scattered downslope to the east, carried there by the natural drift of collapse and gravity. The blanket bog that covers this part of Cork, a deep, wet accumulation of peat that builds up over centuries in high-rainfall upland areas, has done what it always does: it has slowly absorbed the evidence, softening outlines, grassing over rubble, making the human past look almost geological.