No earthwork rises above the soil; no wall or rampart announces itself. What remains is a fosse, the ditch that once defined the perimeter of the enclosure, now buried beneath centuries of cultivation and legible only from above, where it betrays itself as a cropmark, a subtle discolouration in the growing crop caused by the differential moisture and depth of the disturbed soil below.

The site was identified by Jean-Charles Caillère, who spotted the telltale arc in satellite imagery captured on 10 August 2022 via Google Earth. Cropmarks of this kind are most clearly visible during dry summers, when crops growing over buried ditches retain moisture longer and stay greener, while those over compacted or shallower ground stress and yellow earlier. The enclosure is defined on its northern, eastern, and southern sides by this fosse, which shows cleanly in the imagery. On the south-western to northern arc, the original line of the perimeter has survived in a different way, preserved in a curving field boundary that farmers have respected, perhaps without knowing why, for generations. Circular enclosures of this general type in Ireland are frequently associated with early medieval settlement, the ringfort being the most familiar example, though without excavation the precise date and function of the Dicksborough example remain unknown.