That omission is itself quietly telling. The surveyors passed through, drew their lines, and missed it, leaving a settlement enclosure that had already endured for perhaps a thousand years or more to continue its slow subsidence into the rough pasture of a low ridge running north-west to south-east across the landscape.

A ringfort, for those unfamiliar with the term, is a roughly circular enclosed farmstead, typically dating from the early medieval period in Ireland, defined by one or more earthen banks or stone walls and used as a defended homestead rather than a military fortification. The Drumnagoal example is oval rather than perfectly circular, measuring around 26 metres on its longer axis and 21.5 metres across. What survives of the enclosing boundary is uneven: the eastern half retains the clearest evidence, a low stone-kerbed wall or bank between 1.7 and 2.2 metres wide and only 10 to 40 centimetres above the surrounding ground, while the western half has been reduced to little more than a gentle rise in the terrain. A gap roughly 2 metres wide on the north-north-east side may mark the original entrance, a common enough position in ringfort design. Just outside that probable entrance, a rectangular platform and an isolated rise a few metres further to the north-east may be the surviving traces of an old field boundary, hinting at the wider agricultural landscape that once surrounded the enclosure.