In a stretch of reclaimed pasture in Mitchelstowndown East, County Limerick, a possible ring barrow lies somewhere beneath the grass with no surface remains visible to the naked eye or, indeed, to satellite imagery. A ring barrow is a prehistoric funerary monument, typically a low circular mound surrounded by a ditch and outer bank, used for burial during the Bronze Age. Here, the ground gives nothing away.

The site's existence was not recognised from historical Ordnance Survey Ireland maps, on which it does not appear. It came to light instead through aerial photographs taken on 3 November 1984 during survey work for the Bórd Gáis Éireann Curraleigh West to Limerick gas pipeline. Those photographs, shot at a scale of 1:5000 and catalogued as BGE 1/5000; 2578, caught faint crop or soil markings that suggested a ring barrow beneath the surface. The monument was subsequently listed as 'Mitchelstowndown East 2' by Grogan in 1989. A second possible barrow sits approximately 20 metres to the west, suggesting this quiet corner of Limerick farmland may have held some significance in the prehistoric landscape, though the evidence remains tentative. The site sits 35 metres south of a local road that marks the townland boundary with Raheennamadra.

For anyone curious enough to seek it out, the honest expectation is that there is little to see on the ground. The field has been reclaimed as pasture, and no earthworks survive in any obvious form. What makes a visit worthwhile, if anything, is the thought experiment it invites: a monument identified not by physical remains but by a single set of aerial photographs taken during a gas pipeline survey, subsequently noted in the archaeological record and otherwise left to the soil. The approximate location can be inferred from the townland boundary road, but visitors should be aware that they would be looking at ordinary farmland with an uncertain and largely invisible past beneath it.