That, in a way, is precisely the point. Somewhere on a north-facing slope above the Owenboy river valley in County Cork, a ringfort once occupied a commanding position on a ridge, looking out over the land below. It has been entirely levelled, leaving no visible trace on the surface of what is now ordinary pasture. The site survives only as a mark on a map and a set of coordinates.

Ringforts, known also as raths, were the most common form of enclosed settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically consisting of a circular bank and ditch enclosing a domestic area. They were home to farming families across many centuries, and tens of thousands once dotted the Irish countryside. The Kilmoney example, recorded as roughly thirty metres in diameter, appeared on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1842 as a distinct circular enclosure, which means it was still legible in the landscape at that point. At some time between that survey and the present, it was removed, most likely through agricultural improvement, the gradual process by which banks were flattened and ditches filled to make fields more workable. What the 1842 cartographers recorded, later generations erased.