No earthwork breaks the surface, no ring of stones marks the perimeter, and nothing announces that anything is there at all. It is, in a quite literal sense, a place that exists more on paper than in the landscape.

The enclosure's clearest record of existence comes from the Ordnance Survey's six-inch map of 1838, where it was recorded using hachures, the short radiating lines that cartographers of that period used to indicate raised ground or earthwork features. That it was mappable in 1838 but is no longer visible at ground level suggests the low-lying, waterlogged terrain has done its work steadily over the intervening period, gradually absorbing the feature back into the valley floor. Circular enclosures of this kind are broadly understood as the remains of enclosed settlements or farmsteads, often dating to the early medieval period, though without excavation the precise function and date of any individual example remains uncertain. The marshy conditions that have obscured this one may, paradoxically, also have helped to preserve whatever remains beneath, since waterlogged ground can slow the decay of organic material considerably.