Visible from the air as a subrectangular outline measuring roughly 35 metres by 18 metres, the enclosure at Gortnanuv was never excavated, never given a plaque, and was not recorded by anyone standing on the ground. It exists, as far as the official record goes, purely as a shadow caught in an aerial photograph.

The site came to light through the Bruff Survey, a systematic aerial reconnaissance programme that documented features across this part of Limerick. The photograph in question, catalogued as Bruff 70, AP 4/3681 on Map 23, showed the enclosure's outline clearly enough for it to be described by Doody in 2008 as a subrectangular enclosure, meaning its shape is broadly rectangular but with slightly irregular or rounded corners rather than the sharp geometry of a modern field boundary. That morphology, the specific proportions and form of the outline, led Doody to suggest a possible Bronze Age date, placing it somewhere within the broad span running from roughly 2500 to 500 BC. Enclosures of this kind could have served as farmsteads, stock enclosures, or ceremonial spaces, though without excavation it is not possible to say which function this particular example served. The record was compiled by Denis Power and uploaded in November 2013.

Because this site was identified from the air, there is no guarantee that anything obvious survives at ground level. Aerial features of this type often appear as crop marks or soil discolouration that are invisible in ordinary conditions and may only be legible from altitude at certain times of year, particularly in dry summers when buried structures affect plant growth above them. Anyone visiting the general area around Gortnanuv would be looking at ordinary farmland, and the enclosure itself may register as nothing more than a subtle rise or depression in the grass, if it registers at all. The value here is less in what you can see and more in knowing that the landscape carries layers that the eye alone rarely reaches.