Some places reveal themselves only from above, and only under the right conditions. At Ballindrum in County Kildare, a sub-rectangular enclosure lies invisible at ground level, betrayed to the modern eye by nothing more than a subtle variation in crop colour. This kind of cropmark forms when buried features such as ditches or banks affect how plants grow above them; a filled-in fosse, which is an enclosure ditch, tends to retain more moisture than the surrounding soil, producing a line of slightly lusher, darker vegetation that becomes legible from the air during dry summers.

The enclosure at Ballindrum was identified by Dr. Gillian Barrett on 13 July 1990, during an aerial photographic survey. A single photograph, catalogued as GB90.BT.19, captured the cropmark outline of the sub-rectangular enclosure, defined by the trace of its fosse. What makes the site particularly interesting is its immediate context. Clustered in close proximity are at least two further features: a circular enclosure also defined by a fosse, to which a smaller enclosure or ring-ditch is attached on the south-east, and a large, incomplete curvilinear enclosure nearby. Ring-ditches are often the remnants of prehistoric burial monuments, their original mounds long since ploughed flat, while enclosed settlements of various forms were common across Ireland from the Bronze Age through to the early medieval period. The grouping of several such features in one area suggests this corner of Kildare saw sustained use or significance across a considerable span of time, though without excavation the precise nature and dates of these enclosures remain open questions.