This kind of feature, known as a cropmark, appears when buried ditches or banks cause the vegetation above them to grow at slightly different rates, producing telltale patterns that only become legible when viewed from altitude under the right conditions of drought or low sun.

The enclosure was identified from an aerial photograph taken on 16 July 1971 as part of the Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography. The curvilinear outline, measuring approximately 54 metres north to south and 40 metres east to west, is defined by a fosse, the term used for a rock-cut or earthen ditch that typically formed the boundary of early medieval settlement enclosures in Ireland. The monument does not survive intact. A road running roughly north to south appears to cut through the eastern sector, truncating the enclosure on that side. More recently, a house built in 2019 sits approximately ten metres to the north-north-west, and its plot encroaches on the north-western sector of the monument. The enclosure is gradually being consumed from more than one direction, which is perhaps the most telling detail about its current condition: it is being erased incrementally, by the slow ordinary pressure of roads and houses rather than by any dramatic event.