At Carrownagoul in County Clare, that is precisely what the first edition Ordnance Survey map, published in 1842, appears to show: a large oval ringfort pressed directly against a second enclosure to its west, the pair occupying low-lying ground amid hazel scrub. Ringforts, the circular or oval enclosed farmsteads of early medieval Ireland typically defined by an earthen bank and ditch, are common across the Irish landscape, but finding two in such close proximity, apparently sharing a boundary, is a considerably rarer arrangement.

The Carrownagoul ringfort is substantial by any measure, with estimated maximum diameters of roughly fifty metres east-southeast to west-northwest and forty metres north-northeast to south-southwest. That the 1842 map captured it clearly enough to record both its outline and its relationship to the neighbouring enclosure makes the current condition of the site all the more striking. The western portion of the monument has disappeared entirely from ground level, and dense overgrowth now obscures most of what remains. The hazel that covers the area has effectively swallowed the physical evidence that the cartographers of the early nineteenth century could still trace with reasonable confidence.

For anyone making their way to Carrownagoul, the open pasture immediately to the west of the site offers the clearest approach, but the monument itself offers little to the casual eye. The overgrowth is thick enough that the scale of what lies beneath, two adjoining enclosures spanning a considerable footprint, is not easily read from ground level. The real interest here lies less in what can be seen than in the gap between what survives and what the old maps record.