The field, locally called Springfield, shows barely perceptible undulations in the ground, the kind that most walkers would dismiss as uneven grazing land. But when viewed through LiDAR, a technology that uses laser pulses to strip away surface vegetation and reveal subtle variations in terrain, an irregular-shaped earthwork emerges from the data. A separate satellite image, captured by Digital Globe sometime between 2011 and 2013, adds another layer: faint cropmarks suggesting the outline of a possible circular earthwork, a shape that in the Irish landscape most often points to an enclosed settlement or ceremonial site of considerable age.

Cropmarks appear when buried features affect the growth of crops or grass above them, with ditches and pits producing lusher, greener growth, and buried walls or compacted surfaces producing the opposite. The circular form hinted at here is consistent with a ringfort or similar enclosure, though without excavation that remains speculation. A second, more clearly recorded earthwork sits approximately 160 metres to the north-east, suggesting this corner of County Westmeath may hold a cluster of related or overlapping activity from the past. The Royal Canal, which runs immediately to the south and was completed in the early nineteenth century, cuts through a landscape that was already ancient by the time the first navvies broke ground on its banks.