At Carrigeen in County Waterford, a structure that spent decades filed away under the wrong name finally had its identity corrected. What had been catalogued as a generic enclosure, a broad and catch-all category in Irish field archaeology, was eventually recognised for what it actually is: a sheepfold, the kind of walled or banked pen used for gathering, sorting, and sheltering flocks.

The reclassification came after a physical inspection of the site, which prompted a revision from the earlier 1988 designation. It is a small administrative detail, but it reflects something genuine about how rural landscapes are read and misread over time. Enclosures of various kinds, ringforts, field boundaries, animal pens, can look remarkably similar on paper or on an early map, and it often takes someone walking the ground to tell one from another. A sheepfold tends to have certain practical characteristics, a shape and scale suited to managing animals rather than to habitation or defence, and once spotted in that light the original classification no longer held.