It measures roughly forty metres across, roughly circular in shape, and defined by a fosse, which is a ditch dug to demarcate or defend a space. You would walk right over it without knowing anything was there. The only reason we know it exists at all is because, under the right conditions, the soil gives it away.

The enclosure first came to attention through aerial photography taken on the second of August 1996. On that date, the site showed up as a cropmark, a phenomenon where buried ditches and earthworks influence how plants grow above them. Soil that has filled an ancient fosse tends to retain more moisture than the surrounding ground, which means crops growing over it stay greener for longer, or ripen at a slightly different rate. When viewed from above at the correct angle and in dry weather, these subtle differences in vegetation create outlines of features that have otherwise entirely vanished from the surface. The resulting photograph preserves the plan of something that may be many centuries old, even if nothing physical now protrudes above the plough-line.

Enclosures of this general type, roughly circular and fosse-defined, are a fairly common feature of the Irish landscape and can range in date from the prehistoric through to the early medieval period. Without excavation it is not possible to say what this particular example was used for, whether a settlement, an agricultural enclosure, or something else entirely. It remains, for now, a shape preserved in light and shadow, mapped once from the air and waiting for a clearer account of itself.