It reveals itself only under the right conditions, appearing not as any physical feature you could stumble across or touch, but as a cropmark, a subtle variation in the colour and growth of crops overhead that betrays the presence of a buried ditch below. The circle measures approximately 29 metres in diameter, and its outline was picked out from a Google Earth orthoimage captured on 21 July 2021.

Cropmarks form when buried features, such as the filled-in ditches of ancient enclosures, affect the moisture and nutrient content of the soil above them. In dry summers, crops growing over a buried ditch tend to stay greener and grow taller than surrounding plants, because the looser infill retains more water. Viewed from above, the result is a faint but legible ring drawn in the landscape. The Coolfores site was identified and documented by Ian Lennon, whose drone aerial image provided the detail that underpins the record, subsequently compiled by Caimin O'Brien and uploaded in July 2023. The eastern side of the enclosure is transected by the townland boundary with Balgaddy, meaning the feature straddles two separate administrative units of land, a boundary that likely postdates whatever structure once stood here by many centuries.

Because this site exists only as a cropmark, there is nothing to see at ground level, and access to the field itself would require the landowner's permission. The feature is not marked by any monument or signage. The best time to appreciate what was found here is, in a sense, retrospective: examining aerial imagery taken during dry spells in summer, when the soil moisture contrast is at its greatest. For anyone interested in landscape archaeology or the quiet geometry of early enclosures, the lesson of Coolfores is that some of the most significant traces of the past are entirely invisible to a person standing in the field, and only legible from the air.