In a ploughed field in County Tipperary, a circular enclosure lies entirely below the surface, its outline detectable only from the air, where changes in crop growth betray the presence of a buried fosse, the defensive ditch that once defined its perimeter. No earthwork rises above ground level; the field has been turned over and left disturbed. The only way the enclosure has ever been clearly visible is in a single aerial photograph, which captures a cropmark, the faint differential greening or browning of crops growing above buried features, tracing the circle as if drawn in pencil on the landscape.

What makes the site stranger still is its context. Kilcooly Abbey, a substantial Cistercian foundation, lies roughly 150 metres to the north-west. Several other enclosures have been identified within a few hundred metres in various directions, suggesting this part of Tipperary was once densely occupied or organised in ways that are no longer legible at ground level. The enclosure does not appear on a map of the estate drawn in 1749, which places an outer limit on when it was last recognisable as a feature of the landscape, or at least when it was considered worth recording. Whether it predates the abbey, relates to it, or belongs to an entirely different period of activity in the area remains an open question.