In a field in Newtown, County Kildare, something circular and ancient occasionally makes itself known, but only from the air, and only under the right conditions. A cropmark roughly 35 metres in diameter traces the outline of an enclosure that is otherwise invisible at ground level, buried beneath whatever is growing in the soil above it. Cropmarks appear when buried features, such as the filled-in ditches of an old enclosure, affect how plants grow; the crops or grasses rooted above a moisture-retaining ditch tend to grow taller or stay greener longer than those in surrounding ground, and from above, the differential shows up as a faint but readable pattern.

The enclosure at Newtown came to light through aerial photographs taken on 28 June 2018 and examined on Google Earth imagery, with the detail compiled by Caimin O'Brien from information provided by Edward O'Riordan. The circular shape at approximately 35 metres across is consistent with a class of monument common across Ireland, the ringfort, a type of enclosed farmstead typically dating from the early medieval period, roughly the fifth to twelfth centuries. Many thousands of these once dotted the Irish countryside, and a significant number survive only as cropmarks, their earthworks long since ploughed flat, their presence detectable only because the ground remembers what was once dug into it.