At a site in Kilcurrane, County Kerry, what was catalogued as a sheepfold, a simple enclosure for livestock, turned out on closer inspection to be something rather more complicated, and ultimately, nothing verifiable at all.

The story begins with cartographic layering, the practice of reading one historical map against another to test whether a feature has been correctly identified. The site first appeared in the record based on its depiction on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1895, where it was classed as an enclosure. That category covers a broad range of field monuments, from early medieval farmsteads to post-medieval livestock pens, so the label alone carries little precise meaning. When an earlier map, the 1846 Ordnance Survey six-inch edition, was examined for comparison, the picture shifted. Rather than an enclosure of the kind associated with animal husbandry or ancient settlement, the earlier survey indicated a rectangular house at the same location. The two maps, separated by roughly half a century, seemed to be describing quite different things. A field inspection carried out in 1999 resolved little: no monument was found on the ground at all.