Aerial photographs reveal an extensive system of cultivation ridges, the kind of corrugated earthwork pattern that speaks quietly of seasons and subsistence across a landscape that otherwise shows little trace of what happened here.

Cultivation ridges, sometimes called lazy beds, are the raised parallel earthworks formed by spade-based farming, where soil was mounded up in long strips to improve drainage and maximise growing area, particularly for potatoes. They appear across Ireland in their thousands, most often associated with pre-Famine agricultural practice, when smallholders worked marginal land with hand tools rather than ploughs. The system at Ballylarkin was documented through aerial photography, which picks out the subtle ridging that ground-level inspection can easily miss, particularly where later land use has softened the original profile. The photographs in question, referenced as GB90.AX.06 and GB90.AX.08, recorded the site as an extensive rather than fragmentary example, suggesting the cultivation here was substantial in scale.