That circle, and the faint ditching around it, is all that remains of a circular enclosure that would once have been a legible feature in the landscape. The field it sat in has since been reclaimed for agricultural use, which accounts for why the earthwork is now so poorly preserved. Without knowing where to look, most people would walk straight past it.

The enclosure was first recorded not by anyone standing in the field but by a camera in the air. Aerial reconnaissance carried out in July 1965, catalogued under the reference CUCAP ALR 82, picked out the buried or semi-buried feature through two distinct vegetation bands, a technique that works because buried ditches and banks alter how grass grows above them, creating differences in colour or height that only become readable from altitude. Aerial archaeology of this kind has been responsible for identifying a large number of sites across Ireland that would otherwise be invisible at ground level. Two further earthworks sit close by, one roughly 100 metres to the north-north-east and another roughly 100 metres to the north-east, suggesting that this was not an isolated feature but part of a wider pattern of activity across this part of north Galway, the precise nature and date of which remains unclear.