But aerial photographs tell a different story. Cropmarks, the faint shadows that buried features leave on growing vegetation when seen from above, reveal two sets of double fosses, or ditches, curving around the site in concentric rings. The pattern suggests that what survives today as a modest rural churchyard was once enclosed within a much grander boundary, one stretching an estimated 250 metres in diameter.

Enclosures of this kind are a recognised feature of early Irish ecclesiastical sites. A large circular boundary, sometimes reinforced by multiple ditches and banks, would have defined the sacred and functional space of a monastery or church settlement, separating its interior world from the land beyond. The scale here is considerable; 250 metres would place Stabannan among the larger examples known in Ireland, hinting at a site of some significance in its time. The enclosure is visible only as cropmarks, meaning the physical earthworks no longer survive in any obvious form above ground, but the ditches themselves persist beneath the soil, influencing moisture levels and crop growth in ways that cameras mounted on low-flying aircraft can detect. The aerial photographs that revealed this pattern were taken as part of the Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography, a source that has quietly transformed understanding of the Irish landscape over many decades.