Three circular enclosures sit in a field near Barrettstown in County Kildare, and almost nobody walking past would know they were there. There is no earthwork to speak of, no raised bank, no depression in the ground. The features exist, for now, only as cropmarks, the kind of ghostly outlines that appear in aerial photographs when buried archaeology affects how plants grow above them, causing subtle differences in colour and height that become legible only from the air.

The three enclosures were identified on a GSI aerial photograph, reference N 374-5, as closely associated and roughly circular in plan. They lie near the top of a gentle south-facing slope on what was formerly tillage land, now under pasture. Cropmarks of this kind tend to show up best on arable ground, where a buried ditch or bank interrupts the rooting depth of cereal crops and produces visible contrast at the right moment in the growing season. The conversion of this particular field to pasture means the conditions that made the enclosures visible may now rarely if ever repeat. Circular enclosures of this general type are common across Ireland and are often associated with early medieval settlement, though without excavation it is impossible to say what these three represent, how old they are, or whether their proximity to one another reflects contemporary use or separate phases of activity over a longer period.