The medieval church at Anhid East and its accompanying graveyard are still visible on the surface, but what gives the site its particular interest is something that can barely be seen at eye level at all: a large circular enclosure, roughly 90 metres in diameter, that wraps around both church and burial ground and appears to extend towards the river. It was not noticed in any systematic way until an oblique aerial photograph, taken on 17 July 1968 as part of the Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography, revealed the whole pattern from above.

An ecclesiastical enclosure of this kind, a roughly circular boundary, often formed from an earthen bank or ditch, demarcating sacred ground and the community clustered around it, was a characteristic feature of early Irish religious sites. The one at Anhid is associated with a church that dates from the early thirteenth century, and the place itself appears in documentary records going back to at least 1201, when it is listed as a parish and prebend in the district of Coshmagh. The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp, writing in 1904 and 1905, traced the name through several variant spellings across medieval documents, including Athnyde in 1291 and 1302, and noted a 1297 record granting one John F. Richard of Athnyd a licence to cross the sea. A series of rectangular earthworks to the north-west of the enclosure, laid out on an axis parallel to it, may represent a medieval field system or a settlement associated with the ecclesiastical site. A sunken, curving linear feature visible in aerial imagery may be the remains of a hollow road, the kind of deeply worn track that formed wherever people and animals repeatedly followed the same route across soft ground over many generations. Some 240 metres to the south lies Toberregan, a holy well, whose name suggests a long association with the religious landscape of the area.

The site sits about 35 metres west of the River Maigue, on open grassland, and the enclosure itself is not the sort of thing that announces itself on the ground. Visitors who want to appreciate its full extent are better served by consulting the aerial and satellite images available through Google Earth or the Ordnance Survey Ireland orthoimage archive before going. The enclosure has been clearly visible on imagery taken in 2016, 2018, and 2020, which gives a reasonable sense of what to look for. On the ground, attention to slight changes in the grass, to low ridges or shallow depressions, and to the general curve of the terrain around the church and graveyard will reward a slow and patient walk around the perimeter.