Near Mooresfort in County Tipperary, a square enclosure sits in improved agricultural pasture above the old flood plain of a river, on its western side, and it cannot be seen at all from the ground. No bank, no ditch, no ridge in the grass gives it away. The only evidence that something was ever here comes from above.

The enclosure was identified through aerial photograph survey, specifically through the Bruff 54 survey, reference Aerial 2135. Aerial archaeology of this kind works by reading the landscape from altitude, where buried or levelled features leave faint traces in growing crops or parched grass, variations in colour and moisture that are invisible to someone standing in the field but can be remarkably legible from the air. The square form noted here is of interest precisely because most early Irish enclosures are roughly circular, associated with ringforts and farmsteads of the early medieval period. A square or rectilinear shape hints at a different origin, possibly prehistoric, possibly connected to a later tradition of enclosure, though without excavation it is impossible to say more. What remains is the outline, a geometry pressed faintly into the soil above the river plain, waiting for the right angle of light and the right season of growth to make itself briefly visible again.