It was only later that the circular form began to suggest something older beneath the canopy. What the early mapmakers catalogued as ornamental planting may well be an early medieval ringfort, a rath, quietly absorbed into the designed landscape of a Georgian demesne and left to accumulate moss and waterlogged silence.

A ringfort is one of the most common monument types in Ireland, typically a circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank and outer ditch, used as a defended farmstead during the early medieval period. This example, on the demesne lands of Hermitage House, sits roughly 390 metres south of the River Shannon, with a stream marking the townland boundary with Newgarden North just 180 metres to the west. The site has an internal diameter of approximately 40 metres and is defined by a scarp and an external fosse, the term for a defensive ditch. A well is recorded in the north-north-west quadrant of that fosse on the 1897 edition of the Ordnance Survey 25-inch map, and a linear water channel, possibly the overflow from that well, can be traced on Google Earth imagery taken in November 2019, running westward from the fosse toward the stream. The working theory, compiled by researcher Edmond O'Donovan in 2020, is that after 1700 the ringfort was incorporated into the landscaping of the Hermitage demesne and repurposed as a tree-ring, the kind of circular ornamental plantation that Georgian landowners used to punctuate parkland and pleasure grounds.

The site lies just 40 metres south of the walled gardens of the Hermitage, which puts it within easy reach on foot from the house. The tree cover that first obscured its true nature is still visible from aerial imagery, and the waterlogged ditch noted in satellite photography from 2011 to 2013 suggests the site retains some of its original earthwork form beneath the vegetation. Anyone approaching from the north, past the walled gardens, should look for the slight depression of the fosse ringing the circular wood, which is more legible from the outside than from within. The well, if it survives, would be within that northern arc of the ditch.