But this ringfort at Raheennamadra sits within a landscape that the antiquarian T. J. Westropp, writing between 1917 and 1919, considered the equal of Tara and Brugh na Bóinne in County Meath. He called the area by its older name, Óenach Clochar, and understood it as an ancient ceremonial Celtic landscape, one that also takes in the nearby prominence of Knockainey Hill. That is a considerable claim for an unassuming earthwork in a Co. Limerick field.

The site repaid serious attention when the Swedish archaeologist Marten Stenberger excavated it in 1966, uncovering roughly four-fifths of the interior as well as sections through the bank and fosse, the encircling ditch that is a standard feature of Irish ringforts. The fosse proved to be U-shaped in cross-section, and the bank itself was built from boulder clay with occasional stone. Inside, Stenberger found the remains of a round hut some six to seven metres across, with a paved entrance passage of pebbles extending inward across an area of around 75 square metres. A hearth at the centre of the enclosure produced a radiocarbon date of around AD 520. More striking was the souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage of the kind used for storage or refuge, running nine metres along the southern interior wall. A hearth within it yielded an iron leather-scorer, animal bones, and bone combs, and radiocarbon dates placed activity there between roughly AD 520 and AD 690. Two skeletons were found to the north-east of the souterrain, each with an iron knife blade lying to the right of the skull. A deeper hearth in the south of the interior dated considerably earlier, to around AD 110, suggesting the site had a history of use long before the early medieval period.

The ringfort sits approximately 115 metres east of the townland boundary with Mitchelstowndown North and remains in agricultural pasture, so access depends on landowner permission. It is clearly visible on aerial imagery, which gives a useful sense of its oval outline and the surrounding fosse before visiting on the ground. The earthwork is low, the bank reaching no more than about 1.1 metres in height externally, so winter or early spring, when vegetation is low, offers the clearest reading of its shape. What is worth looking for on the ground is the slight depression at the north-west, the original entrance used by the people who paved the path and lit the hearths inside.