They appear only from the sky, and only under the right conditions: as cropmarks, the faint signatures left in growing crops when buried ditches or pits alter the moisture and nutrients available to roots above them. On an otherwise unremarkable, level stretch of farmland, the past is quite literally only legible from altitude.

The ring-ditch visible here is roughly six metres in diameter, defined by a complete inner fosse, which is simply a ditch dug in a circuit, often associated with prehistoric burial or ritual enclosures. A second, outer fosse lies somewhere between seven and twelve metres beyond it, visible from the south-west around to the north. A companion monument sits about twelve metres to the west-south-west. Ring-ditches of this kind are generally understood to be the surviving traces of round barrows, low earthen mounds raised over burials that have long since been ploughed flat, leaving only their encircling ditches as ghostly impressions beneath the soil. The two at Moneycross were first identified by Faith Bailey, who noticed them in satellite imagery, and they became known through that kind of quiet, patient scrutiny of aerial photographs that continues to reveal unrecorded monuments across the Irish landscape.

There is nothing to see at the site itself. No mound survives, no earthwork breaks the surface. The cropmarks that betray these features are visible only on Google Earth imagery captured in July 2018, the kind of dry summer conditions that tend to draw out such patterns most sharply. For anyone curious enough to look, that aerial view remains the closest thing to a visit these particular monuments can offer.