But the ring barrow at Springfield is something considerably older and more deliberate, a prehistoric funerary monument whose form, once you know what you are looking at, resolves clearly out of the ordinary farmland around it.

A ring barrow is a burial monument of the Bronze Age, typically consisting of a central area enclosed by a ditch and an outer earthen bank, the whole arrangement marking a place of interment or ritual significance. The Springfield example, recorded and compiled by Denis Power, follows that pattern with quiet precision. The circular interior measures roughly twelve metres north to south and thirteen and a half metres east to west. Around it runs a scarped edge, then an external fosse, which is simply a ditch, measuring over half a metre deep with a base width of around one and a quarter metres. Beyond that sits a substantial outer bank, nearly seven metres wide, which rises to around three quarters of a metre on its inner face. What makes the monument a little more particular are two deliberate breaks in that outer bank, one at the northwest and one at the southeast, each about two and three quarter metres wide. These gaps are unlikely to be accidental; in comparable monuments they are often interpreted as original entrance points or causeways, though what ceremonies or movements they facilitated can only be guessed at now.

The monument sits in level pasture, and the entire structure, interior and bank alike, lies under grass. There is no excavated hollow, no exposed stonework, nothing to catch the untrained eye at a glance. Visiting in late winter or early spring, when vegetation is low and the low-angle light throws shallow earthworks into relief, gives the best chance of reading the concentric forms on the ground. The breaks in the bank at northwest and southeast are worth seeking out specifically, as they give the clearest sense that this is a shaped and intentional landscape rather than a natural feature. As with many such sites in Irish fields, access and land ownership should be established before approaching.