Somewhere beneath the lawns and housing estates on the edge of Maynooth lies the ghost of an enclosure that existed, as far as the physical record is concerned, only as a shadow in a crop. A 1970 aerial photograph captured what archaeologists call a cropmark, the faint discolouration in growing vegetation caused by a buried fosse, or ditch, tracing a roughly circular area of around forty metres across. Cropmarks appear because soil disturbed by ancient digging retains moisture differently from undisturbed ground, and in dry conditions that difference shows up in the height and colour of the crop above it. That brief photographic window may be the clearest evidence this site will ever yield.

The 1970 photograph suggested more than just a single enclosure. A possible trackway crossed the site, and to the north lay traces of a smaller enclosure, while to the south there were signs of a field system, hints of a small, organised agricultural landscape rather than an isolated feature. What kind of settlement this was, and when it was occupied, the available evidence does not say with any certainty. By 1985, whatever faint topographical trace remained had been buried under earthen landscaping mounds. By 2005, aerial photography showed the area built over with modern housing, the cropmark geometry long since sealed beneath foundations and tarmac.