It is only from the air that its shape becomes legible: a roughly oval enclosure, approximately 34 metres across from north to south and 50 metres from east to west, defined by a scarp, a low change in ground level where an ancient boundary was once raised or cut into the earth. These kinds of crop and soil marks, registered from above rather than below, are among the quieter categories of Irish field archaeology, easily dismissed as a natural contour until a trained eye picks out the geometry.

The earthwork came to light through an aerial photograph taken on the 19th of December 2004 by Michael Moore. That winter date is not incidental; low sun angles and frost or seasonal soil moisture can sharpen the visibility of subtle earthworks that would be invisible in summer growth. The site has not been excavated, and its date and function remain unestablished. Circular or oval enclosures of this kind in the Irish midlands can belong to almost any period, from prehistoric farmsteads to early medieval ringforts, which were the defended or semi-defended homesteads of farming families common across Ireland from roughly the fifth to the twelfth centuries. Without closer investigation, Kinnafad sits in that familiar category of Irish monuments: documented, unmistakably there, and otherwise unexplained.