That is an unusual situation: a possible ecclesiastical enclosure whose clearest trace is not a ditch, a wall, or a raised bank, but a line on an administrative map that quietly follows the arc of something older.

Ecclesiastical enclosures are roughly circular or oval boundaries, often defined by a bank and ditch, that marked the sacred territory of an early Irish church. They are common features of the early medieval landscape, and their curved outlines frequently survive as field boundaries or, as here, as the edges of townlands. At Nohoval, a researcher named O'Hare noted in 2000 that the first edition Ordnance Survey map shows the outline of a large, approximately U-shaped enclosure around 460 metres in diameter, encircling the ruins of Nohoval Church and its associated graveyard. The enclosure, which O'Hare suggested may once have been fully circular, takes in portions of what was Glebe land, and its curving south-western edge aligns with the townland boundary of Nohoval South. The implication is that the boundary of the townland itself preserves the ghost of an ancient sacred precinct. That said, a graveyard survey carried out by Laurence Dunne in 2010 found no archaeological or cartographic evidence to confirm an enclosure, which means the question remains genuinely open. The feature, if it exists, is visible only as an inference from map geometry rather than as anything you could walk along or touch.