That is, precisely, the point. Somewhere beneath a ploughed field on a south-west-facing slope in County Tipperary, a circular enclosure lies entirely out of sight, its outline detectable only from the air, where the soil above its buried outline betrays itself through differential crop growth. These cropmarks, visible in aerial photographs when conditions are right, typically indicate the buried remains of a ditch or bank, the kind of feature associated with early medieval ringforts or prehistoric enclosures, the circular settled spaces that were once a defining feature of the Irish rural landscape.

The enclosure at Monksgrange was identified from an aerial photograph taken in July 1970, with a later photograph from August 1996 confirming the site. At the time of recording, the field had been recently ploughed, leaving no trace above ground. What makes the location quietly remarkable is that it does not stand alone. The same aerial images reveal two further circular cropmark enclosures nearby, one sitting approximately seventy metres to the south-west, the other to the east. Three enclosures in such proximity suggests this part of Tipperary was once a settled, organised landscape, its boundaries and dwelling places now flattened into the earth and legible only to a camera looking down from altitude.