But that unevenness underfoot is the point. Beneath the brambles that now cover much of the interior, limestone breaks through the surface in jagged outcrops, and encircling the whole thing is a ring of earthworks that has been quietly sitting here, largely unannounced, for well over a thousand years.

This is a rath, the most common type of ringfort found across Ireland, typically dating from the early medieval period roughly between 500 and 1000 AD. Raths were enclosed farmsteads, the earthen banks and ditches defining a household's territory and offering a degree of protection for livestock and family. This particular example, recorded by Denis Power and uploaded to the national survey in August 2011, measures approximately 60 metres in diameter. The enclosing earthen bank is modest in scale, rising just 0.35 metres on the interior and 0.85 metres on the exterior, with an external fosse, a ditch, running alongside it at around 0.35 metres deep and a metre wide. What makes this site a little more complex than a typical single-bank rath is the additional stone-faced earthen bank running concentrically just outside the fosse, standing 1.5 metres high. That outer bank appears to have been absorbed into the surrounding field boundary system over the centuries, the ancient and the agricultural having grown together into a single landscape feature.

The site sits in pasture in Co. Limerick, in an area of limestone outcropping that gives the whole place a slightly rocky, uneven character. Visitors should be prepared for that rough interior terrain, and the dense bramble cover means the earthworks are more legible from outside the ring than from within. Walking the perimeter allows a clearer sense of the concentric structure, particularly the relationship between the fosse and the outer stone-faced bank. As with many such sites in agricultural land, access depends on the goodwill of the landowner, so enquiring locally beforehand is advisable.