This one is notable for what does not. At Coolmona in County Cork, a ringfort that appeared on Ordnance Survey maps from 1842 right through to 1939 was levelled around 1972 during routine field fence clearance, leaving no visible surface trace in what is now open pasture. A ringfort, or rath, is a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and ditch, typically dating to the early medieval period and used as a farmstead or place of shelter. This particular example measured approximately 35 metres in diameter, and for over a century it sat quietly in the landscape, mapped and present, before disappearing in a single act of agricultural tidying.

When Hartnett recorded the site in 1939, it still retained enough definition to describe: a roughly circular enclosure of around 130 feet in diameter, bounded at that point by a modern fence with a thick planted hedge, and with its original entrance oriented to the west. That entrance detail matters, since westward-facing openings are a recurring feature of Irish ringforts, though the reasons remain debated. What makes the Coolmona site particularly interesting is its relationship to its neighbours. It was one of five ringforts evenly spaced across roughly 800 metres along the south-facing slope of the Shournagh River valley, an arrangement that suggests deliberate, organised settlement rather than isolated occupation. The other four remain on record, and their regular spacing implies the valley was once a coherent farmed landscape, divided and held by families or communities whose names are now lost.

There is nothing to see at the Coolmona site today. The value in knowing about it lies elsewhere, in the evidence it offers of how thoroughly a settled early medieval landscape can be erased, and in the contrast with its surviving companions along the same valley slope, which together preserve the outline of a pattern that this site can no longer show for itself.