The ornamental lake at Riverstown in County Cork carries something of that quality, a body of water shaped by human intention rather than geology, made to be looked at from a certain angle, at a certain time of day, by people who no longer come.

Ornamental lakes of this kind were a common feature of eighteenth and nineteenth century demesne design in Ireland, when landowners with the means and inclination would redirect streams, excavate low ground, or dam small watercourses to create a reflecting surface that gave an estate its sense of prospect and composure. They were functional in a secondary way, sometimes used for fishing or wildfowl, but their primary purpose was aesthetic, part of the grammar of a landscaped demesne that might also include walled gardens, ha-has, and specimen trees. Without the house at its centre, the lake quietly becomes something else, a pond in a field to some eyes, to others a legible remnant of a whole way of organising land and leisure.