No gap in the bank, no worn threshold, no narrowing that might once have served as a gate. Whatever purpose it served, the people who built it either entered by some method that has left no trace, or the entrance has been so thoroughly absorbed into the surrounding earthwork over the centuries that it is now indistinguishable from the rest.

The enclosure is roughly sixteen metres across in both directions, making it a compact but not insignificant space. Its boundary is an earth and stone bank, faced on both its inner and outer sides with large stones set edge-to-edge, a construction technique that suggests some care and intention rather than a hastily thrown-up field boundary. Enclosures of this general type are found across Ireland and can date from the prehistoric period through to the early medieval, sometimes serving as settlements, sometimes as places set apart for ritual or burial. At Sroughan, the picture is complicated further by a slight mound in the north-west corner of the interior, measuring roughly eight metres by four. A mound within an enclosed space is the kind of detail that tends to attract more questions than answers: it could represent the remains of a structure, a burial deposit, or simply an accumulation of cleared material. The site sits above steeper ground that falls away toward the Kings River, a position that gives it a degree of natural prominence without being dramatically elevated.