Aerial photography first brought it to attention, and it duly appeared in both the Sites and Monuments Record in 1992 and the Record of Monuments and Places in 1996, listed simply as an enclosure, which in an Irish archaeological context typically suggests something prehistoric or early medieval. It was the kind of quiet, unexplained feature that can sit in a landscape for decades before anyone gets close enough to ask serious questions.

When an inspection was carried out in 1999, the structure turned out to be a subcircular enclosure roughly twelve metres in internal diameter, built from a narrow drystone wall and, by all appearances, of modern rather than ancient construction. Drystone walling, in which stones are fitted together without mortar, is a technique used continuously in the west of Ireland across many centuries, which is part of what makes dating such walls difficult from a distance or from the air. The interior of the enclosure slopes toward the north-east, following the natural lie of the ridge, with higher ground rising away to the south-west. What purpose the structure served, and when exactly it was built, the record does not say.