The low-lying pastureland of this part of County Galway gives nothing away; no earthwork, no ridge, no shadow in the grass betrays what was once a small enclosed space, roughly trapezoidal in shape, measuring around 31 metres north to south and 26 metres east to west.

When the Ordnance Survey recorded this corner of Galway in 1838, producing the meticulous six-inch maps that remain one of the great documents of the Irish landscape, the enclosure was present and clear enough to be plotted. Enclosures of this kind, typically defined by an earthen bank or a combination of bank and ditch, are scattered across Ireland in enormous numbers and vary widely in age and purpose, ranging from early medieval farmsteads to livestock enclosures of more recent centuries. By the time the same ground was surveyed again for the revised edition of 1933, the enclosure had been largely levelled, with only the south-eastern corner still legible on the map. At some point between those two surveys, almost a century of agricultural activity had done what centuries before it had not. After 1933, even that remnant disappeared, and today no visible trace survives at the surface.