On a west-facing slope at Clonmult in east Cork, an early medieval ringfort once occupied the ground, its circular earthen bank enclosing a space of roughly 40 metres across. Today there is nothing left to see. The site has been levelled, and no surface trace remains.

Ringforts, known in Irish as raths, were the most common form of rural settlement in early medieval Ireland, typically dating from around the fifth to the twelfth centuries. They consisted of one or more circular earthen or stone banks enclosing a domestic space, probably the farmstead of a single family or small household. The Clonmult example was recorded on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1936 as a circular enclosure, which means it was still visible, at least in outline, at that point. At some time after that survey, the earthworks were removed entirely, most likely through agricultural improvement or land clearance. What the 1936 map captured, then, is a last glimpse of something that had already stood for perhaps a thousand years before its final erasure.