Somewhere beneath a low-lying stretch of wet pasture in Ballyveelish, County Limerick, lies a ring barrow, a circular earthen mound typically raised over prehistoric burials, ringed by a ditch and sometimes an outer bank. No trace of it survives above ground. It does not appear on Ordnance Survey orthophotos, nor on Digital Globe satellite imagery. The only reason it is recorded at all is that an aircraft flew over this particular field on the 3rd of November 1984, and a photograph caught something invisible to anyone standing on the ground.

The site came to light during survey work associated with the Bord Gáis Éireann Cork-Dublin gas pipeline, a major infrastructure project that prompted one of the more productive, if rarely celebrated, episodes of aerial archaeology in twentieth-century Ireland. Cropmarks and soil disturbances, legible from altitude in certain light and seasonal conditions, revealed features that centuries of farming had long since levelled. This barrow, catalogued as Site No. 022195 on aerial photograph BGE No. 3224, was one such feature. Two further ring barrows lie approximately 160 metres to the south-east, and a prehistoric or early medieval enclosure sits roughly 140 metres to the east, suggesting that this unremarkable corner of County Limerick was once a place of some significance. The record was compiled by Fiona Rooney and uploaded to the national monuments database in August 2020.

For anyone curious enough to visit, the site lies 220 metres east of the townland boundary with Ballinroche East. The terrain is wet pasture, so sturdy footwear is advisable, particularly in the wetter months. There is nothing to orient yourself by once you arrive; no marker, no earthwork, no visible hollow. The value of coming, if there is one, is conceptual rather than visual. You would be standing above something old, possibly Bronze Age, known only because of a gas company's survey flight and a single aerial photograph taken four decades ago on an early November morning.