That word, an Irish term for a fairy fort or enclosed settlement, hints at the double life these features have always led in the Irish countryside, understood by archaeologists as early medieval farmsteads and by local tradition as something rather more charged.

The site is a ringfort, the most common type of monument surviving in the Irish landscape, with estimates of around 40,000 once existing across the island. They were typically built between roughly the fifth and twelfth centuries as enclosed farmsteads, the bank and ditch marking the boundary of a family's domestic and agricultural space. This particular example measures 33.5 metres across on its north-to-south axis. An earthen bank, standing to about 0.9 metres on its northern and western sides and surviving as a lower scarp of around 0.5 metres to the south, defines the circuit. Outside it, a fosse, the ditch dug to provide material for the bank, survives to a depth of 0.4 metres to the north-east, with shallower traces still visible to the east and south-east. Two gaps in the bank, each 3.5 metres wide, one to the north and one to the south, mark what were likely the original entrances into the enclosure. The asymmetry in how the bank and fosse survive around the perimeter is fairly typical; centuries of ploughing, grazing, and weathering erode some sections while others hold their profile.

For anyone who finds themselves in this part of West Cork, the site is in pasture land and the earthworks, though modest in height, remain legible on the ground, particularly where the bank is best preserved on the northern arc. The west-facing slope means the low afternoon sun can pick out the subtle relief of the fosse in a way that flatter light will not, making the outline easier to read in the landscape.