This one in Farnanes townland, Co. Cork, offers almost nothing: a barely perceptible undulation in the ground to the west, rising no more than 30 centimetres at its highest point. That is all that remains above ground of what was once almost certainly a rath, the Irish term for a roughly circular enclosed farmstead of the early medieval period, typically defined by one or more earthen banks and used as a defended homestead from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries.

What makes this particular site quietly remarkable is its survival in a form that is, paradoxically, both erased and intact. The area has never been ploughed, which means that whatever lies beneath the surface of this steep east-facing pasture has not been turned, scattered, or destroyed by agriculture. Locally the site is still known as a "lios", the Irish word for a fairy fort or enclosed place, a name that in rural Ireland has long carried a protective superstition, and one that may well explain why the land was left unbroken. That folk memory, whether or not anyone still actively believes it, has done more to preserve the archaeology here than any formal designation might have managed.