Rising above the scrub at Knockansweeny in north Cork is a ringfort, a type of enclosed settlement built mostly during the early medieval period, typically between the fifth and twelfth centuries, in which an earthen bank and ditch defined a farmstead or the home of a minor lord. What makes this one worth a second look is that it is not simply a single-bank affair. It is a multivallate ringfort, meaning it has more than one enclosing bank and ditch, a feature generally associated with higher-status occupants in early Irish society.

The site is circular, measuring 38 metres across in both directions, and preserves a fairly legible arrangement of earthworks despite the scrub cover. Two earthen banks survive, separated by a fosse, which is the ditch dug to provide material for the bank and to reinforce the boundary. The inner bank still stands to about half a metre on its interior face, while the middle bank reaches 1.3 metres on its exterior. A third bank, around 0.8 metres high, runs from south to west with a second fosse between it and the middle bank. There are breaks in the inner and middle banks to the east, almost certainly the original entrance, and a second gap roughly two metres wide in the middle bank to the north-east. The interior takes in the very top of the hill, with the highest ground sitting at the centre, covered now in ferns rather than whatever structures once stood there.