On a June day in 2017, the cropmark was clearly visible from orbit, the buried boundary betraying itself through differential growth in the vegetation above it, the way ancient earthworks often do in dry summers when the soil over disturbed ground retains moisture differently from the surrounding area.

The enclosure was already old when it was first formally recorded, appearing on the first edition Ordnance Survey six-inch map of 1839 as a roughly circular feature with a field boundary running along its perimeter in the south-east quadrant. Enclosures of this kind in Ireland are frequently associated with early medieval settlement, the circular raised ringfort or its undefended equivalent being one of the most common monument types in the Irish landscape. At some point between that 1839 survey and the revised OS mapping carried out between 1899 and 1902, a railway line was constructed on a north-west to south-east alignment, cutting directly through the eastern sector of the monument. The railway neither erased the enclosure from the record nor drew attention to what it had disturbed; the two simply coexist in the landscape, one layered over the other, the older feature continuing to leave its faint signature in the crops above it.