Yet beneath and around that modest earthwork lies something more substantial. A souterrain, the underground stone-lined passage or chamber that early medieval farming communities used for storage and refuge, was recorded in the same field, and roughly thirty metres to the north-east, archaeologists have identified a possible second enclosure, a rath or ringfort.

Ringforts, roughly circular enclosures defined by earthen banks and ditches, were the dominant settlement form in Ireland during the early medieval period, roughly the sixth to twelfth centuries. Most were farmsteads, home to a single family and their livestock, though the earthworks could vary considerably in scale and complexity depending on the status of the occupants. The souterrain associated with this site, catalogued separately, hints at a reasonably established settlement, since these underground features required real effort to construct and served a practical domestic function. The proximity of a second possible enclosure in the same field raises the question of whether two phases of occupation occurred here, or whether the two features formed part of a single, more complex arrangement.

Centuries of tillage have done their work on both features. The bank is levelled, the enclosure reduced to a faint trace in the landscape, and what would once have been a visible and functioning part of the North Cork countryside now survives largely as a set of coordinates and a cautious entry in the archaeological record.