Nothing on the historic Ordnance Survey maps ever acknowledged it. For generations it was simply ground, unremarkable to anyone walking past.

The enclosure at Ballyvouden came to light not through excavation or fieldwork but through the sky. A 1986 aerial photographic survey centred on the nearby town of Bruff captured a circular cropmark at the site, cropmarks being the faint differential patterns in vegetation growth that betray buried or earthwork features to a camera looking straight down. The survey reference, logged as Bruff 51 and AP 4/3631, placed it formally on the archaeological record for the first time. Subsequent orthophotographs taken by Ordnance Survey Ireland between 2005 and 2012 showed the feature more clearly as a raised platform, still visible in a Google Earth image dated 20 September 2020 and in oblique aerial photographs held by the Archaeological Survey of Ireland. The record was compiled by Martin Fitzpatrick and uploaded in March 2021. What makes the site additionally interesting is its immediate neighbourhood: another enclosure sits roughly sixty metres to the northwest, and a second lies about seventy metres to the northeast, suggesting this was once a more densely settled or organised landscape than the empty pasture implies today.

Ballyvouden is agricultural land, and there is no formal public access to the field itself. The enclosure is most legible from the air or via satellite imagery, and the casual visitor is unlikely to make out much from a roadside. The wet ground conditions that help preserve the fosse also make the surrounding pasture difficult underfoot, particularly in winter and early spring. Those with a serious interest in the site should consult the National Monuments Service record and the aerial photography referenced in the survey before visiting the area, as the platform and its defining ditch are subtle features that reward prior familiarity with what to look for.