The ringfort at Ardagh in County Cork belongs firmly to the second category. When archaeologists attempted to inspect it, permission was denied, which means that what we know of this enclosure comes from observations made at a distance rather than from any systematic investigation of the interior.

A ringfort, or rath, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by earthen banks and ditches, most commonly dating from the early medieval period in Ireland, roughly the fifth to the twelfth century. They served as farmsteads and settlement enclosures, and thousands survive across the country in varying states of preservation. The Ardagh example is moderately sized, measuring approximately 38 metres north to south and 35 metres east to west. Its defences are uneven around the circuit: a scarp, essentially a steep slope cut into the ground, rises to about two metres along the northern to western arc, while the western to northern stretch carries a low internal earthen bank standing around half a metre in height on the inside, accompanied by a shallow external fosse, the term for the ditch that would originally have reinforced the bank. The asymmetry of these features, one side more dramatically cut than the other, is not unusual in ringforts and may reflect the natural lie of the land as much as any deliberate design choice.