The one at Darrary, on a low hill facing east-south-east near Clonakilty in West Cork, is an exception. Sitting in tillage ground, it is a fairly typical example of its type on the surface, a near-circular earthen enclosure roughly 37 metres across, with a bank still standing around one and a half metres high, a surrounding fosse or ditch two metres deep, and a low counterscarp bank beyond that. There are two causewayed entrances, one to the south-east thought to be original, and a second to the west added later. What makes Darrary more legible than most is what was found beneath the surface.

Between 1987 and 1988, archaeologist J. O'Sullivan led an excavation here organised by Clonakilty Macra na Feirme and funded through a FAS employment scheme. The dig uncovered the footprint of a central round house roughly six metres in diameter, along with a range of smaller outbuildings around it, a picture consistent with a prosperous Early Medieval farming household. Three souterrains were also identified; souterrains are stone-lined underground passages or chambers, probably used for cool storage and possibly as refuges. The finds were modest but telling: iron slag indicating metalworking on site, everyday iron objects including a knife and nails, a quernstone for grinding grain, and one small blue glass bead, an object that would have travelled some distance to end up here. At the time the archaeological work was published, a reconstruction of the fort was under way as part of the same community project.