There is no earthwork to notice, no crop mark to catch the eye, no rise in the ground. The monument exists, as far as ordinary observation is concerned, not at all.

It came to light in 2017 when geophysical survey work was carried out ahead of a proposed solar farm development in the area. Geophysics involves passing instruments across the ground surface to detect variations in the soil beneath, revealing buried features without any digging. What emerged from that survey was not one anomaly but many: this enclosure is one of at least ten identified in the same general vicinity, suggesting that the flat lowland around Ballyconra was once considerably more active, and more structured, than its present pastoral quiet implies. Within this particular enclosure, the geophysical data points to internal features, among them what appears to be a circular structure and several pits. A fosse, the term for a defensive or boundary ditch associated with such enclosures, runs around the site but is cut across in its southern sector by a later field boundary running roughly east-northeast to west-southwest, the kind of quiet collision between different periods of land use that geophysics is well placed to expose. Circular enclosures of this type are common across Ireland and are often associated with early medieval settlement, though without excavation the precise date and function of this one remain open questions.