The oval outline was first identified in a 1973 aerial photograph taken by the Geological Survey of Ireland, the kind of oblique or vertical image that can reveal crop marks, soil discolouration, and slight earthwork shadows that centuries of ploughing have long since erased at ground level. Enclosures of this type are among the most common early medieval features in the Irish landscape, typically circular or oval earthen banks enclosing a farmstead or small settlement, but their very familiarity makes the ones that have quietly disappeared all the more easy to overlook.

By the time anyone thought to formally record what the photograph had captured, the northwest quadrant of the enclosure had already been built upon. The house went up in the late 1990s, and the surrounding ground was disturbed and landscaped in the process, removing whatever surface traces might once have remained. What makes the Figlash example particularly interesting, though, is a detail that survives just to the east: a field boundary running northwest to southeast contains a distinct kink, a slight deflection in its otherwise regular line that may indicate the boundary was laid out in deliberate deference to the enclosure. Farmers and landowners have done this for centuries, sometimes out of superstition around raths and fairy forts, sometimes simply because an earthwork presented a physical obstacle. In this case, the enclosure itself is gone, but the memory of its presence may be encoded in the crooked line of a hedgerow.