That cartographic detail is now one of the more telling pieces of evidence that something old survives in this corner of the county, even if the ground itself offers only quiet, unassuming traces.

What remains today is a roughly circular raised platform, approximately twenty metres across and about one metre in height. The form is consistent with a rath, the Irish term for a ringfort, which was the most common type of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. These earthen enclosures, defined by one or more banks and ditches, served as farmsteads for individual families, with the raised interior providing a degree of protection for people and livestock alike. At Coolnamara, the low platform is all that survives of what would once have been a more pronounced earthwork, its banks reduced over centuries by agriculture and weathering to the gentle swell visible today.