That is more or less the situation with this ring-barrow in the townland of Ballyshoneen, County Limerick, which does not appear on any edition of the Ordnance Survey maps and was only formally identified from the air. A ring-barrow, for the unfamiliar, is a prehistoric funerary mound enclosed by a circular ditch and sometimes an outer bank, a form of monument associated broadly with the Bronze Age in Ireland, though the term covers considerable variation in size and construction. This particular example sits in ordinary agricultural pasture, with nothing at ground level to announce itself to the passing eye.

The monument came to light during the Bruff aerial photographic survey in 1986, when it appeared as a circular crop mark on survey image Bruff 43(01). Crop marks of this kind form when buried ditches or banks cause the vegetation above them to grow differently from the surrounding field, revealing the geometry of a long-vanished structure. The outline was confirmed again when it became visible as a circular ditch on Ordnance Survey Ireland orthophotographs taken between 2005 and 2012, and a further Google Earth orthophoto from November 2018 corroborates the shape. It sits roughly 100 metres east of the townland boundary with Ballynaclogh, and it is not alone: a second ring-barrow lies about 50 metres to the east, and a third sits 180 metres to the south, suggesting this corner of east Limerick was once a meaningful place in the landscape for those who buried or commemorated their dead. The record was compiled by Martin Fitzpatrick and uploaded in July 2020.

There is no waymarked path to this site, no signage, and no formal public access, so anyone wishing to visit should establish land ownership in advance and seek permission accordingly. The monument lies in working pasture, and the ground-level traces are subtle at best. The aerial photographs are genuinely the clearest way to appreciate the form of this barrow; the circular ditch that defines it is far more legible from above than from the field edge. If you are in the area and curious, the neighbouring ring-barrows to the east and south mean there is a small cluster worth understanding together rather than in isolation.