It would be easy to walk past it without a second glance. The feature measures somewhere between six and eight metres in diameter and is defined by a shallow fosse, a word simply meaning a ditch or trench cut into the earth, with a low external bank running around the outside. The interior height is barely ten centimetres; the external bank rises to fifteen. In practical terms, the whole thing barely interrupts the grass.

A ring barrow of this kind is a funerary monument, typically associated with the Bronze Age, in which a burial, whether of cremated remains or otherwise, was placed within a circular area defined by a ditch and bank. The form is found widely across Ireland and Britain, and while some examples survive as prominent earthworks, many, like this one in Cloonkeen, have been softened almost to invisibility by centuries of agriculture and weathering. The gentle south-east-facing slope on which this example sits is typical of the kind of terrain where such monuments were placed, often with some regard for aspect and visibility in the landscape. What survives here is vestigial, a faint geometric trace that only makes sense once you know what you are looking for.