A local field still carries the name "Camp Field", and the townland to the north of the town is called Camphill, a name that preserves the memory of the main English encampment. But on the ground itself, there is almost nothing left to see.

The context is the Siege of Kinsale, which unfolded over the winter of 1601 to 1602. A Spanish force landed and occupied Kinsale on 2nd October 1601, prompting an English army to take up position on the high ground surrounding the town by 4th November. The siege lasted until 12th January 1602, with the decisive Battle of Kinsale fought on 3rd January 1603, ending in an English victory that effectively broke the power of the Gaelic lordships. Contemporary maps show that the English constructed a series of siege works and batteries on the hills around the town, taking the form of rectangular earthwork entrenchments with projecting corner bastions, a standard early modern field fortification designed to allow defenders to cover the faces of the walls with flanking fire. When an early twentieth-century survey attempted to locate these works, only one could be identified with any confidence: a sconce, that is, a small detached earthwork fortification, recorded as "Sr. Jaratt's Horseis' Sconce", lying approximately 210 yards west-southwest of Cappagh House. Even then, the survey found it barely legible, described as a hollow in the fields on either side of a road, with what appeared to be a formless lump marking the eastern bastion. It was estimated to have been somewhere between 90 and 100 yards square.

By the time more recent fieldwork was carried out, even those faint traces had gone. The area around Cappagh House is now under pasture, and no visible features remain. Camp Field, roughly 250 metres further west on the north side of the road, similarly retains its evocative name but shows nothing of what may once have lain beneath it. The place rewards a certain kind of attention, one comfortable with absence, where the significance lies entirely in what is no longer there.