That moment came in 1943, when peat workers broke through to find several stakes arranged in a rough line, each spaced about fifteen feet from the next and standing around two feet tall. Close to one of the stakes there were traces of fire. Then, presumably, the cutting moved on.

The bog preserved what would otherwise have been lost entirely. Waterlogged, oxygen-poor peat is one of the few environments in which organic material, wood especially, survives across centuries or even millennia, which is why bogs across Ireland have yielded everything from butter to human bodies to ancient trackways. The stakes at Gortnahoughtee have not been precisely dated, and the notes recorded by University College Cork at the time give little more than the bare facts: the spacing, the approximate height, the pointed tips, and those fire remains beside one stake. What the structure was for is not stated. A fence line, a boundary marker, the edge of a platform or dwelling, something connected with the fire itself, all remain possibilities. The ambiguity is part of what makes it interesting.