Aerial photographs taken as part of the Cambridge University Collection of Aerial Photography reveal circular and sub-circular cropmarks spreading across roughly eight acres of a north-facing hillside east of Balrothery village. Cropmarks appear when buried features such as ditches or walls affect the growth of crops or grass above them, producing faint discolourations visible only from altitude. What those photographs outlined was not a simple enclosure but something considerably more layered.

Pre-development testing carried out in 1998 by Baker and Swan confirmed what the aerial evidence suggested: a complex of concentric ditches following the natural contours of the hill, associated with occupation layers accumulated over centuries. Subsequent excavations in the southern quadrant uncovered ditches, burnt features, structural remains, and souterrains, the latter being stone-lined underground passages typically associated with early medieval settlement in Ireland, used variously for storage or refuge. Human burial was recorded at the summit. The finds recovered from the site are particularly telling: E Ware pottery, which was imported from western Gaul and reached Ireland primarily between the fifth and seventh centuries, appeared alongside bronze pins, iron knives, a bone comb, a spindle whorl, and glass beads. Radiocarbon dating placed occupation throughout the first millennium AD, with the hilltop enclosure defended by ditched fortifications from around the third century through to the seventh or eighth century. An open, undefended settlement then evolved on the site before falling out of use by the ninth century.

For a visitor, there is no formal heritage marker or managed access point; the site exists within the open green space of the Rosepark housing estate, a residential area east of Balrothery. The upstanding archaeology is not visually dramatic at ground level, and the significance lies mostly beneath the surface. What remains above ground, preserved within the estate's open space, is the faint relief of the landscape itself, the gentle slope of a hill that people chose, fortified, lived on, and buried their dead upon for something approaching six hundred years.