No walls, no earthworks, no visible trace of any structure breaks the surface of the grassland. What is known about the enclosure here comes not from anything a visitor could see underfoot, but from the sky.

Aerial photographs taken by M. Moore in 1996 picked out the ghostly outline of an enclosure on a low rise of ground, the kind of subtle cropmark or soil discolouration that only becomes legible from altitude. Enclosures of this type are among the most common archaeological features in the Irish landscape, typically circular or oval boundaries defined by a bank and ditch, used variously across prehistory and the early medieval period for settlement, animal management, or ritual purposes. At Magherareagh, whatever once gave the enclosure its physical shape has long since levelled into the earth, leaving only the differential growth of grass above buried features to betray its outline. The elevated position, with good views in all directions, is consistent with many such sites, where the choice of ground suggests an interest in visibility, whether for practical or social reasons.