But seen from the air, a different picture emerges. An aerial photograph taken in July 1989 revealed a cropmark tracing the fosse, or defensive ditch, of a circular enclosure roughly forty metres in diameter. Cropmarks form when buried features affect how crops grow above them, with ditches and pits producing lusher, darker vegetation that becomes legible only from altitude. The site at Rath belongs to a category of monument that was once a familiar feature of the Irish countryside.

Within the interior, two maculae, darker patches in the crop that may signal the presence of pits or souterrains, were also visible. A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage associated with early medieval settlement, typically used for storage or refuge. The surrounding field adds further complexity: numerous linear cropmarks extend to the west and north, hinting at field boundaries, trackways, or other structural remains that have long since disappeared below the ploughline. A second circular enclosure, a distinct and separately recorded site, lies roughly one hundred metres to the north, suggesting that this was not an isolated farmstead but part of a broader pattern of early settlement activity in the area.