There is a ringfort at Shanakill in County Waterford that you could walk across without knowing it was there. Sitting in open pasture at the edge of a plateau above the Clodiagh River, the enclosure is simply not visible at ground level, its earthen banks so eroded by time and agricultural use that the whole thing has effectively sunk back into the landscape.

A ringfort, to give the general term its due, is a circular enclosure defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches, built during the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries, and used as a defended farmstead. At Shanakill, the enclosure measures approximately fifty metres in external diameter, and its circular outline was recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps of both 1840 and 1927, meaning cartographers working nearly two centuries ago could still trace it clearly enough to mark it down. That the maps captured it and the eye in the field cannot speaks to how much can be read in a landscape from above that is simply invisible when you are standing in it. The plateau position, overlooking the Clodiagh as it runs west to east immediately to the north, is a placement typical of early medieval settlement, favouring elevated ground near a reliable water source.