On 13 July 1989, an aerial photograph catalogued as GB89.T.36 captured a cropmark, a faint discolouration in the growing grain caused by buried features affecting how plants draw moisture and nutrients from the soil, that revealed the outline of a ring-ditch roughly five metres in diameter. Ring-ditches are generally understood to be the remains of circular enclosures, often associated with prehistoric funerary or ceremonial activity, where a shallow ditch once surrounded a central area, sometimes a burial mound long since ploughed flat.

What makes this particular site quietly remarkable is that it does not stand alone. Two further ring-ditches were identified in the same aerial photograph in close proximity, one lying approximately 18 metres to the north, another about 26 metres to the north-northwest. The three form a loose cluster, which in archaeological terms is a meaningful arrangement. Grouped ring-ditches like these are sometimes interpreted as a small prehistoric cemetery or a repeatedly used ceremonial landscape, where the clustering itself carries significance rather than being incidental. The field at Swiftsheath has been in tillage, meaning it is actively ploughed arable land, which is precisely the condition that makes cropmarks visible to aerial survey but also the condition most likely to erode or destroy buried remains over time.